ON DEATH ROW
Egypt’s forensic authority submitted evidence of the torture of another suspect, student Essam Atta, to the court that tried him. It did not help his case.
On the day Atta handed himself into police for questioning about the shooting of an officer, his father, Mohammed, brought food to the station. Atta was in the fourth year of a graphic design course at Ismailia University and had no interest in politics, Mohammed said. Atta told his family he'd done nothing wrong. His father, who'd told Atta to turn himself in, was sure his son would soon be home.
But Mohammed was turned away from the police station. He tried again the following day.
"Officials there kept denying that he was being held inside and denied that they knew anything about his whereabouts," Mohammed said. But he could hear his son screaming inside the building. "I was shattered. I couldn't bear it."
Several days later, Atta and six other men appeared on a pro-state television channel looking bruised, disheveled and weak, before confessing to their role in the killing of the policeman. Their families saw them on TV but didn't know where they were being held.
A report by Egypt's forensic authority, prepared for the trial judge and reviewed by Reuters, concluded it was "technically possible" that Atta and his co-defendants were "assaulted using a wooden stick, bamboo, electric taser and some were burned with cigarettes." They also appeared to have been kept in handcuffs for a long period, said the report, which hasn't been reported previously.
Co-defendant Hazem Mohamed Salah is now on death row at Al-Abadiya jail in Damanhur. He told his family that he was tortured for several days and then taken into the prosecutor's office. "The prosecutor told him to sit down and offered him a glass of hibiscus, and then told him to sign the confession without asking him a single question," said his sister, Dina. He drank the juice, a common refreshment in Egypt, and signed quietly.
A lawyer involved in the case, Shibl Abou al-Mahasen, confirmed this account.
Six years on, Atta, now in his early twenties, is sitting on death row. He was sentenced in 2017; the verdict was upheld in November 2018. According to an Amnesty researcher, there are 61 men on death row, most of them political prisoners.
Atta's family says he signed a confession under duress, and he was questioned without a lawyer.
"I regret handing him in," said Atta's father, Mohamed. "I thought that there was rule of law in the country and that they would listen when he told his part of the story. But my son was beaten up, electrocuted and humiliated."
