Witness: Egyptian Army Waterboarded Prisoners

'They are on the side of the regime,' blogger says
By Kevin Spak,  Newser Staff
Posted Feb 11, 2011 9:41 AM CST
Witness: Egyptian Army Waterboarded Prisoners
An army soldier sits on an armored vehicle as anti-government protesters hold their shoes in the air during a protest in Cairo, Feb. 11, 2011.   (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)

The Egyptian military has been torturing protesters, according to famed Egyptian blogger Kareem Amer. Amer and a filmmaker friend spent nearly a week in a military prison “in the middle of the desert” for breaking curfew, he tells the Daily Beast. There he witnessed fellow prisoners being “severely tortured ... in front of our eyes—waterboarded, beaten with sticks, and electrocuted.”

Amer is no stranger to prisons; he spent the last four years in jail for criticizing Hosni Mubarak and “insulting Islam.” But he’d never been in a place like this. “This prison was like a trash-can,” he says. "The cell was tiny and the bathroom was disgusting. They did not allow us to shower even once since we were arrested." But wait, doesn’t the army profess to be neutral, or even on the protesters’ side? “What neutrality?” Amer replies angrily. “They are on the side of the regime. They are humiliating the people. You would not have believed what we saw in this short period in prison.” (More Kareem Amer stories.)

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