16,000 said jailed since Morsi’s ouster

Monday, March 17, 2014

CAIRO - Egypt’s crackdown on Islamists has jailed 16,000 people in the past eight months in the country’s biggest roundup in nearly two decades, according to previously unreleased figures from security officials. Rights activists say reports of abuses in prisons are mounting, with prisoners describing systematic beatings and miserable conditions for dozens packed into tiny cells.

The Egyptian government has not released official numbers for those arrested in the sweeps since the military ousted Islamist President Mohammed Morsi in July. But four senior officials - two from the Interior Ministry and two from the military - gave The Associated Press a count of 16,000, including about 3,000 prominent members of Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood.

The count, which is consistent with recent estimates by human-rights groups, was based on a tally kept by the Interior Ministry to which the military also has access. The officials gave the figures to the AP on condition of anonymity because the government has not released them.

The flood of arrests has swamped prisons and the legal system. Many are held for months without charge.

“My son looks like a caveman now. His hair and nails are long, he has a beard and he is unclean,” said Nagham Omar, describing the conditions that her 20-year-old son, Salahideen Ayman Mohammed, has endured since his arrest in January while participating in a pro-Morsi protest. He and 22 others are crammed in a 3-by-3-yard cell in a police station in the southern city of Assiut, said Omar, who visits him once a week. Mohammed has not been charged.

The government says the police, run by the Interior Ministry, have changed their ways from the era of autocrat Hosni Mubarak, when the security forces became notorious for torture and corruption. Now, officials say, there is no tolerance for abuses.

The assistant interior minister for human rights, Maj. Gen. Abu Bakr Abdel-Karim, told the newspaper Al-Watan in an interview last month that “it is possible that there is some use of cruelty” and said anyone claiming to be maltreated should file a complaint with either the ministry or the general prosecutors’ office. But he said so far there had been no proof presented of maltreatment.

The new military-backed government presents the campaign against the Muslim Brotherhood and its Islamist allies as a fight against terrorism, accusing the group of cooperating with Islamic militants in a wave of bombings and assassinations since Morsi’s ouster. The violence has killed dozens of police and soldiers.

The Brotherhood denies any link to the militants and says authorities are using terrorism as an excuse to eliminate the group as a political rival. Some 2,000 Brotherhood supporters have been killed by police in crackdowns on pro-Morsi protests that Islamists have held for months across the country.

Since then, much of Egypt’s media have fed the fervor, depicting the Brotherhood as terrorists and the police and military as heroes.

Egypt’s interim leader on Sunday said the general public opposes the inclusion of the Muslim Brotherhood in the political process.

In an interview broadcast on CBC television, Adly Mansour said any member of the Brotherhood who renounces violence and gives up membership in the group is welcomed to join the forthcoming elections.

But Mansour said he can’t open negotiations with the group.

“Negotiate with whom? Those who committed violence, incited it?” he said. “The whole public would stand against me.”

Mansour also denied complaints that the crackdown against the group and those who oppose the interim government has been heavy-handed, saying that security forces pursue only those who carry out violent acts.

Most of those detained in the crackdown since Morsi’s July 3 ouster are Islamists detained during street protests. They also include Brotherhood members arrested in raids on their homes. But there have also been frequent arrests of individuals found carrying posters or other literature seen as supporting the Brotherhood or critical of the military. Secular, anti-military activists have been arrested for violating a new law that bans all protests without a permit.

Information for this article was contributed by Laura Dean of The Associated Press.

Front Section, Pages 6 on 03/17/2014