Egyptian lawyers plan strike to protest 'police assaults'

Wednesday 03-06-2015 10:12 PM
Egyptian lawyers plan strike to protest 'police assaults'
By

The Egyptian Lawyers Syndicate on Wednesday called on its members to strike on Saturday in protest at "police assaults" on lawyers, citing an alleged attack by a police officer on a lawyer in Damietta governorate.

Emad Fahmy was allegedly assaulted on Tuesday while at work in a police station in the town of Faraskour in Damietta by a police officer who used his shoe during the attack. Fahmy was taken to hospital and received eight stitches.

Lawyers will register their protest outside courtrooms on Saturday.

"Egypt's Interior Ministry insists on going backwards to pre January 25, 2011 policies and relinquishing the protection of citizens," syndicate head Sameh Ashour said at a Cairo press conference.

He described the policeman's alleged attack on Fahmy as a "savage crime."

Ashour said that the Interior Ministry needs to be restructured, adding that the interior minister is the first to blame.

The syndicate filed a report of the incident with the Damietta prosecution, as well as the prosecutor-general.

A similar protest was held earlier this year after the death in February of a lawyer, Karim Hamdy, allegedly due to torture carried out inside a police station in the working-class Cairo district of Matariya.

Dozens of lawyers protested Hamdy’s death outside the Lawyers Syndicate headquarters in central Cairo.

Two National Security Apparatus officers are currently standing trial on charges of torturing Hamdy to death.

On Sunday, Egypt's National Council for Human Rights said that human rights' organisations had estimated that between 80 and 98 people had died in detention between June 2013 and December 2014, either in police stations or prisons, citing "a return to the phenomena of people dying inside places of detention."

However, the Interior Ministry has only acknowledged the death of 36 detainees.

"It is true that there is nothing that proves that any of them died from torture, but there is also nothing to prove otherwise," the council’s report read.

facebook comments