William Fisher

NEW YORK, May 11 2005 (IPS) — A major rights watchdog warned the United States, Arab League, and European Union against transferring detainees to prisons in Egypt and cautioned them not to seek or accept Egyptian government assurances that prisoners will not be tortured or abused.

Human Rights Watch (HRW), in a report released Wednesday, said Washington, Arab, and European governments have been complicit in ”rendering” suspected Islamic extremists to Egypt, where many have faced torture and others have simply disappeared.

”Sending an Islamist militant to Egypt is a recipe for sending them to their torture. No one should close their eyes and pretend otherwise,” HRW lawyer Reed Brody told IPS.

The report, ”Black Hole: The Fate of Islamists Rendered to Egypt”, said that countries including the United States, Yemen, Sweden, the United Arab Emirates, Pakistan, the former Yugoslavia, Croatia, Albania, Bulgaria, Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, Sudan, and Iran, have extradited or kidnapped alleged militants and sent them to Egypt.

The report highlighted the cases of Muhammad and Hussain al- Zawahiri, Ahmad Agiza and Muhammad al-Zari, and Sayyid Imam al-Sharif, as well as Abd al-Salam Ali al-Hila and former Brigadier General Ahmad Salim Ubaid, two Yemenis who were abducted in Cairo by security forces and transferred out of the country.

”Egypt is the common thread linking these cases; although the (men) come from different backgrounds, their cases highlight different illegal measures governments have used to apprehend and hold in detention alleged militants,” the report said.

U.S. and other media had previously reported most of these cases.

HRW said it saw ”an increased willingness of other countries, including Sudan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen, to return alleged militants living inside their borders to their countries of origin, usually without any form of due process and in spite of the international prohibition against sending persons involuntarily to countries where they face torture and ill-treatment.”

These countries are ”under increased pressure from the U.S. government to cooperate, and, in some cases, wanting to benefit from improved relations with the U.S.,” it added.

HRW said it had identified at least 63 individuals who have been rendered to, and in a few cases from, Egypt since 1995, but added that ”the actual number of rendered individuals is likely much higher. Cairo-based analysts and lawyers as well as exiled Islamist activists who track such returns closely estimate the total number of returnees to be as high as 152-200 since September 11, 2001.”

Most if not all of those forcibly returned to Egypt were suspected of being adherents of militant Islamist groups that have carried out acts of political violence, such as assassinations or attempted assassinations of high officials, as well as attacks that targeted or indiscriminately harmed civilians, the report said.

In many cases the returning country was a neighboring Arab or South Asian state. In some cases the United States played a role in the transfer.

”In most cases there is no indication that any form of judicial procedure, such as a formal extradition request and hearing, was used; even where warrants may have been issued, in the face of Egypt’s terrible record of torture the state holding the suspect should have declined the request, in accordance with international law forbidding any country from sending someone to a country, including his or her country of origin, where he or she will likely be subjected to torture,” the report said.

In April, U.S. President George W. Bush, asked about sending terror suspects to third countries for interrogations, said that ”we operate within the law, and we send people to countries where they say they’re not going to torture the people.”

The report cautioned Washington and Arab and European governments: ”Do not under any circumstances extradite, render, or otherwise transfer to Egypt persons suspected or accused of security offenses unless and until the government of Egypt has demonstrated that it has ended practices of torture and ill-treatment, and taken demonstrable and effective steps to end impunity for officials responsible for ordering, condoning, or carrying out acts of torture and ill-treatment (and) do not seek or accept diplomatic assurances as the basis for returning any person to Egypt.”

Methods of torture include beatings with fists, feet, leather straps, sticks, and electric cables; suspension in contorted and painful positions accompanied by beatings; the application of electric shocks; and sexual intimidation and violence, the HRW report said.

The U.S. government also has reported cases of torture at the hands of Egyptian law enforcement and security officials, most recently in its ”Country Reports on Human Rights Practices” for 2004.

The Egyptian government’s National Council for Human Rights, headed by former U.N. Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, acknowledged in its first annual report last April that torture is part of ”normal investigative practice” in Egypt.

HRW released its report one day after the Egyptian parliament approved, 405 to 34, a constitutional amendment that opens presidential elections to multiple candidates for the first time. However, critics charged that the amendment makes it impossible for independent candidates to run.