MORE THAN 660 MORSI’S SUPPORTERS DETAINED AND BEATEN: RIGHT GROUPS
The detained supporters of ousted President Morsi have been beaten and denied access to lawyers, the Amnesty added, according to Al Jazeera reports monitored by Mi’raj News Agency (MINA).
In a report leaked on Thursday (18/7), the human rights organisation says more than 660 supporters of ousted President Mohamad Morsi have been held since he was ousted by military-backed Israel from power three weeks ago, with many of the detained being Muslim Brotherhood leaders.
According to Amnesty International, some detainees that have been released say they were blindfolded, beaten, hit with rifle butts and subjected to electric shocks.
Many of the detainees, says the rights group, were not given access to a lawyer.
Al Jazeera’s Rawya Rageh, reporting from Cairo, says that while the Egyptian police do not have a “brilliant track record of processing detainees,” it remains “difficult to ascertain the nature of treatment that these detainees received once they are inside the station or are in custody.”
“It’s difficult to independently verify the contents of the report, primarily because it’s entirely dependent on the testimonies of the detainees themselves,” added our correspondent.
However, the nature of the arrests themselves, many of which took place during running street battles, were witnessed by many, and were “heavy-handed”, leaving the impression that supporters of the ousted president were being targeted.
Meanwhile, Morsi’s supporters continue to rally across the country and continue their vigil in the Nasr City are of Cairo. The supporters seems took the upper streets of Cairo as well.
In the run-up to the coup, millions took to the streets accusing Morsi of concentrating power in the hands of the Muslim Brotherhood during his year in office, of sending the economy into free fall and of failing to protect minorities.
The political upheaval in the wake of Morsi’s toppling on July 3 inflamed tensions in the Arab world’s most populous nation, with near daily protests by Morsi supporters in the capital, where thousands of people remained camped out at the Rabaa al-Adawiya mosque in Cairo’s Nasr City.
More demonstrations are expected on Friday after the weekly main Muslim prayers.
Egypt has been rocked by violence since the coup, with 53 people killed last week, most of them Morsi supporters, when clashes erupted after security forces attacks muslim in praying outside a military barracks in Cairo.(T/P03/P04)
Mi’raj News Agency (MINA)
