By Kevin Kim
Impunity Watch Reporter, Middle East

CAIRO, Egypt – In what appears to be growing government intolerance of police brutality, an Egyptian court sentenced four policemen for up to seven years for beating a man to death during interrogation. The sentence comes after two other police brutality cases in November that sparked widespread media coverage and discussion.

The four police personnel, including a captain and an informant, were jailed by the criminal court in the northern Nile Delta town of Mansoura in a hearing that lasted more than 10 hours. Three of the accused officers, including the captain, received seven years. The informant received a three-year term.

The defendants were convicted of beating a carpenter, Nasr Abdullah, 38, to death in July by banging his head against the wall in order to extract information about the location of his brother who is a suspect in a drug case. Afterwards, the news of his death provoked angry demonstrations from villagers.

Earlier this month, two policemen were sentenced to three years each in prison for sodomizing a bus driver with a stick at a police station in Cairo. The sexual assault was filmed and leaked to the Internet, appearing on the popular video-sharing Web site YouTube.

Two days later, another man was found dead in the streets of Giza after sustaining injuries from torture by the police for three days.

The seven year prison sentences handed out to the four men Tuesday is unprecedented in light of the fact that many of these allegations in the past went unpunished and accused often enjoyed near-impunity. “This is the longest sentence heard of in the last 10 years,” said Gasser Abdel Razak, the Mid-East representative of the US-based organization Human Rights Watch. But he warned that Tuesday’s harsh sentence was more likely the result of one activist judge rather than a change of heart on the part of the government.

For more information please see:

BBC News – Egypt police jailed for killing – 28 November 2007

International Herald Tribune – Egypt police given unprecedented harsh 7 year prison sentences in torture death – 28 November 2007

Voice of America – Egyptian police jailed four officers in torture case – 28 November 2007

Jurist – Egypt police officers sentences to 7 years for torture death – 28 November 2007