مركز النديم لتأهيل ضحايا العنف والتعذيب

Update: Yucef released on the 29th of November 2010.

Update: Prosecution extends Yucef's detention 15 more days.

Journalist and activist Yucef Shabaan was supposed to present today in front of the magistrate of appeal to decide upon his release or extension of his administrative detention. On Friday the 19^th of November 2010 the Raml prosecution in Alexandria had ordered the detention of Shabaan for 4 days.. By law this decision should have expired today at 2.30 p.m. and Shabaan should have been released. But Yucef did not show up. Nobody saw him since his arrest on Friday while he was covering events in the area of Abu Soliman in Alexandria for the electronic El Badil newspaper where he works as a journalist.

Yucef was kidnapped from the street last Friday by officer Khaled Shalabi, chief of intelligence in Alexandria, who had previously threatened to “settle accounts” with Yucef during the latter’s participation in the Khaled Said protests. Upon his arrest, with other activists, Yucef was blindfolded, handcuffed and pushed into a microbus where he was brutally beaten by the officer himself and his assistants. The chief of intelligence pulled him by his hair and pushed his head out of the car window threatening that “Yucef will not be able to write again”.

The car initially took Yucef and the others to El Montaza police station. From there the rest of the detainees were then taken to El Raml police station where they were kept until they were thrown along the ring road, barefoot, with no IDs money or mobile phones. Yucef however was not with them. Since that day nobody has seen him.

Excerpts from the testimony of a survivor held in Madinet Nasr SSI headquarters:

They handcuffed me for 60 continuous days, even when I was asleep.. they locked me up in a cell, about 30 meters underground.. the officer told me: nobody knows you are here except the minister of interior.. as soon as I entered the place I was met by a reception of abuse that would shame anybody to hear.. they swore at my mother and myself with the most obscene words.. they accused me of several things,, stripped me of my clothes and then ordered me to put them on again.. they handcuffed me again and tightened the blindfold than said from no you are number 2.. forget your name.. they gave me the instructions to follow while I am there.. then they called one of the soldiers and told him get him two blankets and chose them full of fleas and lice.. they brought them.. they also allocated my space.. an area 1.5 m x 60 cm.. where I would put my blanket and sleep while still handcuffed and blindfolded day and night.. I was not interrogated for 7 days.. we were handled by the sergeants.. slapping, kicking, beating with the shoe on our face and we were made to stand for prolonged periods of time that could last 40 continuous hours.. we would hear the numbers being called out.. from 1- 89.. we would hear the screams of the victims days and night.. then the interrogation began and with that the electric shocks.

(from Madinet Nasr file.. to be published)

3 July

1. A lieutenant aggresses El Shorouk correspondent, verbally abuses him and beats him while covering an accident. The officer was informed of the nature of the correspondent’s profession but continued his aggression. (El Shorouk newspaper)

4 July