AP PHOTO/MOHAMED AL SEHETY
OPEN
SEASON
fueled more violence. On Jan. 10,
editor-in-chief of Daily News Egypt,
Maher Hamoud, tweeted: “Old
friend in Damietta stabbed, held in
intensive care, his company looted
for suspicion of being [Muslim
Brotherhood]. Whoops, he’s not!”
When Ammar’s brothers first
went missing, he feared he would
never hear from them again. For
five days, their mother took food
and water from prison to prison
in Kafr el-Sheikh, searching for
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her youngest son. When a lawyer
finally tracked Mahmoud down in
a riot police camp, the teenager
told his mother that he had not
been fed or given water for three
days, Ammar says.
Mahmoud described unbearable conditions inside the jail:
Every day, riot police threw cold
water on the inmates while telling them they would never be allowed to return home.
Over the decades, Egypt’s
prisons have gained a reputation as places where torture is
considered standard procedure.
Anti-riot
policemen block
the entrance
of a polling
station in Giza,
Egypt, in 2007.
The Muslim
Brotherhood
accused the
government
of arresting its
members, barring
many from polling
stations and
rigging the vote,
as Brotherhood
candidates
competed for the
first time in Shura
Council elections.