Egypt's human rights situation is getting worse because recent constitutional amendments have weakened legal safeguards against torture, an international human rights watchdog said on today.
An Amnesty International delegation is in Cairo to launch a report that says patterns of systemic abuse could be entrenched by amendments which would "write into permanent law emergency-style powers that had led to serious human rights violations for decades".
Amnesty report
"I would say that it's worse in the sense that the few safeguards that we had in the constitution are now being attacked, so you're actually making sure that there will be no supervision of any future abuse," Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui, Amnesty International's deputy programme director for the Middle East and North Africa, told reporters in Cairo.
The report called on the government to repeal emergency legislation that allowed for human rights abuses, such as trials before military courts, and ensure the prompt and independent investigation of all torture allegations.
It also called for an end to administrative, incommunicado and secret detention.
The constitutional amendments enshrine the same restrictions on public freedoms which the government has imposed by emergency law since President Hosni Mubarak took office in 1981.
They exempt measures against terrorism from restrictions such as the requirement for a court order for detention and intercepting communications.
"Torture and other ill-treatment, arbitrary arrests and detention, and grossly unfair trials before emergency and military courts have all been key features of Egypt's 40-year state of emergency," the report said.
The more prevalent torture methods include electric shocks, rape, suspension in painful positions, beatings, threats of death, sexual abuse and attacks on relatives, said the report. Some 18,000 Egyptians are being held without charge, it added.
It called on the government to reveal the names of people rendered to Egypt from other countries.