Amnesty International collected testimonies from women and girl protesters apprehended by security forces since the ousting of Mohamed Morsi. They alleged sexual and other forms of
104 Al-Masry Al-Youm, The first trial hearing of a police secretary accused of indecent assault of a
handicapped girl today [original in Arabic], 27 November 2014: http://bit.ly/1CvTwuq; Al-Youm Al-Saba’, We publish details of the referral of the police secretary accused of raping a girl in Imbaba Department of Criminal Affairs [original in Arabic], 24 September 2014: http://bit.ly/1DDSO1R; and Almesryoon, The full story of the rape of the ‘Imbaba girl’ at the hands of the secretary of police [original in Arabic], 1
September 2014: http://bit.ly/1KKjDU1
105 Ahram Online, Nine policemen detained over sexual harassment in Egypt’s Minya, 5 October 2014:
http://bit.ly/154MZwd
106 Ahram Online, 2 Egyptian policemen accused of rape ordered released on bail, 10 January 2015:
http://bit.ly/1AnQs0I; and Egyptian policemen charged with sexually assaulting woman in patrol car, 17 January 2015: http://bit.ly/1uhVSZh
abuse upon their arrest and during their initial period of detention.108
For instance, a 14-year-old girl arrested inside the Abu Bakr Mosque on 17 August 2013109
described to Amnesty International what happened when security forces in black, most likely members of the Ministry of Interior’s Special Forces, stormed the mosque:
“We were pushed down and beaten with the back of rifles. They [the security forces] got
everyone to lie on ground floor of the mosque, ordered us to lie on our stomachs, and shut our eyes. I tripped on bodies on the floor… I was slapped on the face, and hit on the back with a rifle butt. My abaya [a robe that covers the body] and clothes underneath were covered in blood after they made us lie on the floor. We were then searched by men in black who touched me and the other girls all over our bodies and put their hands inside our clothes.”
A 28-year-old woman arrested on the same day from al-Fath Mosque experienced similar abuse. She said that during transfer to a police vehicle, a man dressed in black uniform – she assumed to be a member of the Central Security Forces – groped her. A number of women who had gathered outside al-Fath Mosque to express their opposition to the Muslim Brotherhood and support for the government attacked her – hitting her, calling her a killer, and ripping off her clothes and veil while security forces watched.
An Al-Azhar University student in her early twenties told Amnesty International that members of the Central Security Forces apprehended her inside university grounds on 30 December 2013, dragging her across the pavement, beating her with batons and kicking her with their boots as she fell. She said that an officer continued to hit her inside the police van after he discovered that she had tried to conceal a second mobile phone from him. He also
threatened to rape her and “show her what it’s like to be treated like a woman”. Abuse continued at the police station where she was transferred later that day. She was forced to stand against a wall in a corridor and lift one leg, while low-ranking police officers hit her with batons as they passed.
Another Al-Azhar University student told Amnesty International that security forces surrounded a small group of mainly female protesters when they sought to reach Rabaa al- Adawiya Square on 5 October 2013 while chanting anti-military and pro-Morsi slogans. A man wearing a black uniform slapped her and threatened her at gunpoint. A group of local residents opposed to the Muslim Brotherhood then proceeded to insult the women and girls, including by threatening to rape them to “teach them a lesson”, while security forces stood within earshot and failed to intervene.
A number of perceived supporters of the deposed president recounted to Amnesty
108 Women interviewed were held at Nasr City Police Station 2, Maadi Police Station, Azbakiya Police
Station, Salam Central Security Camp, Tora Central Security Camp and 6 October First Police Station.
109 Many pro-Morsi protesters sheltered inside the mosque after demonstrations in the vicinity of Ramsis
Square in central Cairo on 16 August 2013 turned violent. See Amnesty International, Egypt: Security
forces must show restraint after reckless policing of violent protest, 23 August 2013:
International intimidating interrogations. They assumed that the questioning was carried out by members of the National Security Agency, an intelligence body, as the interrogators wore civilian clothes. A 19-year-old university student arrested during pro-Morsi protests in Greater Cairo on 6 October 2013 told Amnesty International:
“The officer yelled bring me the munaqaba’ [a woman wearing a full face veil] followed by a
lot of bad insults and curses… When I told him ‘God forgive you’, he punched me in the leg with all his might… I fell… It was painful to stand… He then made me kneel on the ground and take off my face veil… I stayed like that for three hours, while he questioned me... He looked through my phones, and saw pictures of Morsi… He asked about my relatives, what they do, their political beliefs... He kept insulting me and my mother.”
Security forces have also assaulted women anti-government protesters and political activists known for their opposition to the Muslim Brotherhood. They included prominent human rights and political activists arrested on 26 November 2013 during the security forces’ violent dispersal of a peaceful protest organized by the No to Military Trials group in front of the Shura Council. Those detained reported beatings and groping.110 Similarly, women and
girls arrested on 25 January 2014 in the vicinity of Maadi Police Station, as they gathered to join an anti-government and anti-Muslim Brotherhood protest, told Amnesty International that they had been beaten all over their bodies and faces.111
Such abuses against women take place in a climate of impunity. To date, there has been no accountability for sexual violence by the security forces, including for the highly invasive forced “virginity tests” carried out by an army doctor on women protesters who were arrested on 9 March 2011 and taken into military detention in Cairo. Seventeen of the women were held for four days, some of whom told Amnesty International that male soldiers had beaten and strip-searched them and given them electric shocks. While an administrative court subsequently banned forced “virginity tests” in December 2011, in March 2012 a military court acquitted the army doctor accused of carrying of the “tests”.