A 2006 terror case involving a group plotting attacks in Egypt was probably based on false confessions and reflects a pattern of abuse made possible under emergency laws, Human Rights Watch said on Tuesday. In April 2006, the authorities said they had broken up a previously unheard of the group, the 22-member Al-Taefa al-Mansura or Victorious Sect, that was planning attacks on tourist and oil sites as well as religious leaders. In a report titled “Anatomy of a State Security Case: The Victorious Sect Arrests” - the New York-based HRW said that Egypt had little or no evidence for the allegations against members of the so-called group and that its State Security Investigations (SSI) domestic intelligence agency tortured the detainees. “The Victorious Sect arrests demonstrate how the State Security Investigations uses torture and arbitrary detention to make people confess to crimes real or imagined,” said Joanne Mariner, HRW’s terrorism and counter-terrorism director. “Despite the SSI’s long record of abusive conduct, SSI officers responsible for abuses are rarely held to account.”
According to HRW, the men were arrested in February and March 2006, weeks before their detention was announced, and held incommunicado around Cairo. “We were beaten up with fists and sticks and kicked around. (SSI) used electricity on different parts of the body, including sensitive areas,” one detainee told HRW. The rights watchdog said the case highlights a pattern of abuse made possible by special powers accorded to the SSI under Egypt’s state of emergency, in effect continuously since 1981.