August 09, 2007	Thursday	Rajab 24, 1428

CAIRO: An Egyptian human rights group said on Wednesday it has documented 567 cases of torture in police custody of which 167 resulted in death since 1993. “This is only a sample compared to the hundreds of other cases we were not able to document,” the Egyptian Organisation for Human Rights said in a statement announcing a report on “The Phenomenon of Torture in Egypt.” The report is based on individual testimonies, legal cases as well as medical and autopsy reports, it said, including 26 cases of police torture recorded this year alone which resulted in three deaths.

“These cases show that the practice of torture is widespread in Egypt and testify to the law's inability to stop it or punish those responsible,” the statement said.

According to the London-based Amnesty International, torture in detention is systematic in Egypt and, in the majority of cases, the perpetrators are not brought to justice.—AFP