An Egyptian criminal court in the eastern city of Ismailia sentenced a police officer on Tuesday to eight years in prison for beating a man to death in custody and falsifying police records, Reuters reports. The policeman, Mohamed Ibrahim, was sentenced to five years for “torture and beating leading to death” and three years for falsifying police records in connection to the case. The victim was a middle-aged veterinarian by the name of Afify Hassan whom the sentenced police officer beat to death after hauling him from his wife’s pharmacy on 25 November last year. The incident was one of three separate cases of deaths in custody in the space of a single week in November, sparking riots in Ismailia and the southern city of Luxor, where nine police officers are facing trial for beating a father of four to death. Human rights groups claim that police brutality and torture are rampant in Egypt. In Human Rights Watch’s annual World Report of 2016, the organization maintains that despite the presence of documentation of police brutality, few cases reach the courts. And if they do, they are often appealed and the…
Egypt Police Officer Sentenced to 8 Years in Prison for Killing a Man in Custody
February 10, 2016
