Behind Closed Doors : Torture and Detention in Egypt

Officers and soldiers of Egypt's General Directorate for State Security Investigation (SSI) regularly resort to physical and psychological torture during the period when political and security suspects are held in incommunicado detention.

In this report, Middle East Watch charges that the problem is compounded by the Prosecutor General's failure to investigate adequately and to prosecute those responsible for such abuses.

Senior Egyptian officials have consistently denied that torture occurs. Middle East Watch has gathered personal testimony from a wide variety of Egyptian citizens that forms that basis of the description and analysis of the methods used by the SSI to effect political arrests, the conditions and treatment of detainees in SSI custody, and the use of torture. "Behind Closed Doors" offers four sets of recommendations, to the Egyptian government, to the Ministry of Interior, the Bush administration and to the member states of the European Community, in order to improve Egypt's poor human rights record.