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Report: Army secretly torturing Egypt protesters

/ Source: msnbc.com staff and news service reports

Civil rights groups claim scores of protesters in Egypt have been secretly detained by the army and some have been tortured, the U.K.'s Guardian newspaper reported Thursday.

A civil rights group leader told the newspaper that people had "disappeared" across the country amid the ongoing demonstrations designed to drive President Hosni Mubarak from power.

The Guardian said that while the country's State Security Intelligence service was known for disappearances and torture, the army was not.

On the streets, the protesters have treated the troops almost as liberators and tried to persuade them to join the campaign for democracy.

Thousands in military custody? An Egyptian human rights group told The Guardian that families had been searching for missing relatives and that some of those arrested by the army were believed to have been detained in the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities near Tahrir Square.

Hossam Bahgat, director of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights in Cairo, said that hundreds, possibly thousands, of people had "disappeared" into military custody.

"Their range is very wide, from people who were at the protests or detained for breaking curfew to those who talked back at an army officer or were handed over to the army for looking suspicious or for looking like foreigners even if they were not," he said. "It's unusual and to the best of our knowledge it's also unprecedented for the army to be doing this."

The Guardian said it spoke to a 23-year-old man, named only as Ashraf, who said he was detained on Friday of last week after he was found carrying medical supplies near Tahrir Square.

Ashraf said he was beaten, then taken to a building behind the museum. An army officer asked him who was "paying me to be against the government."

"When I said I wanted a better government, he hit me across the head and I fell to the floor. Then soldiers started kicking me. One of them kept kicking me between my legs," he told The Guardian.

"They got a bayonet and threatened to rape me with it. Then they waved it between my legs. They said I could die there or I could disappear into prison and no one would ever know. The torture was painful but the idea of disappearing in a military prison was really frightening," he added.

He said he was held with other men who had been tortured, but was released after 18 hours.

'Electric shock machine'
The Guardian said Human Rights Watch also had detailed a case in which an unnamed activist was beaten and shocked with a Taser after being found with a pro-democracy leaflet by a soldier.

He said he was taken to a police station and beaten for 30 minutes. He said he was later attached to cables from an "electric shock machine" by an interrogator.

"He shocked me all over my body, leaving no place untouched. It wasn't a real interrogation; he didn't ask that many questions. He tortured me twice like this on Friday, and one more time on Saturday," the activist added.

Robert Tait, a journalist who used to work for The Guardian and was covering the crisis for RFE/RL, a U.S. radio station based in Prague, described his experience of detention by Egypt's secret police.

, Tait said he was blindfolded and handcuffed and held "inside the bowels of the Mukhabarat," the SSI building.

He described hearing the "sickening, rapid click-click-clicking of the electrocuting device ... as it passed within inches of my face."

"Then came a scream of agony, followed by a pitiful whimpering from the handcuffed, blindfolded victim as the force of the shock propelled him across the floor," he wrote.

"A hail of vicious punches and kicks rained down on the prone bodies next to me, creating loud thumps. The torturers screamed abuse all around me. Only later were their chilling words translated to me by an Arabic-speaking colleague: 'In this hotel, there are only two items on the menu for those who don't behave — electrocution and rape.'"

Tait said he heard a local Egyptian working as a "fixer" for him, who was also detained, screaming in pain. However, he said the man told friends he had bruises "from sleeping on the floor" and said they had been "treated very well."

Tait said he was released after 28 hours and then spent a further 16 hours at an airport deportation facility.

Army's power growingAn article by the Associated Press said that Egypt's military had taken advantage of the protests to solidify its authority, and now had four of its own in the nation's top government posts.

The military, the article said, was using a combination of force and public relations to deliver what amounted to a soft coup in a country where it is widely viewed as the ultimate guarantor of national interests.

Suleiman's warning of a coup, in an interview with newspaper editors, left them in stunned silence, media reports of the meeting said.

He may have been bluffing, but some analysts said the military could be left with a limited number of options, especially if the strikes and protests grow in number or intensity.

"If this thing continues or grows, the military will have to decide whether to stage a coup and order a crackdown," said Michael W. Hanna, an Egypt expert at the New York-based Century Foundation. "In the meantime, the situation will not change unless the army decides to change it."

The recipient of $1.3 billion in annual U.S. aid, the army has in recent years ventured into business, strengthening its hand with lucrative government contracts in construction, road building and food production.

"Any successor to Mubarak who does not enjoy the support of the senior military brass will be actively undermined and thwarted by the generals," said Augustus Richard Norton, a Middle East expert from Boston University.