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

By Kevin Kim
Impunity Watch Reporter, Middle East

TEHRAN, Iran – Iran’s Supreme Court has ordered a new trial over the death of an Iranian-Canadian photojournalist who died four years ago in a Tehran prison.

Zahra Kazemi, who was 54, was arrested in June 2003 while taking photographs outside notorious Evin Prison in the north of the capital. There, she endured more than three days of interrogation and eventually died in jail. She was never formally charged with any crime.

Shortly after her death in 2003, an Iranian judiciary accused intelligence ministry agent Mohammad Reza Aghdam Ahmadi of “semi-intentional murder,” which he pled not guilty. In November 2005, Ahmadi was acquitted but an appeals court ordered the case to be reopened because of “shortcomings in the investigations.” On Tuesday, verification branch of Iran’s Supreme Court had reviewed the lower courts’ rulings and ordered a new investigation to be undertaken by more “competent authority.”

Kazemi’s cause of death, meanwhile, is in dispute. Although a presidential inquiry revealed that Kazemi died from a fractured skull caused by a “physical attack,” the lower court had ruled that she died in custody from a fall after her blood pressure dropped during a hunger strike. However, a former doctor at the Iranian defense ministry who examined Kazemi during her detention said that there were obvious signs of her having been tortured and brutally raped by interrogators at the time.

Kazemi family’s legal team believes Ahmadi was a mere scapegoat who was covering up for the guilt of a higher-ranking official such as senior justice official in Evin prison, Mohammad Bakhshi. Bakhshi along with Iran currently faces a 17 million civil suit filed in Quebec Superior Court.

The case severely strained relations between the Canadian and Iranian governments since her death. Iran hastily buried Kazemi’s body after she died and rejected Canada’s request for her body to be exhumed and handed over for a new post-mortem. Furthermore, the Canadian government has repeatedly demanded that Iran agree to an international investigation into the journalist’s death to no avail.

For more information, please see:

United Press International – Iran to look again at journalist’s death – 28 November 2007

BBC News – Iranian court reopens Kazemi case – 27 November 2007

AFP – Iran orders retrial over Kazemi killing – 27 November 2007

Associated Press – New probe in death of Iranian-Canadian – 27 November 2007

The Canadian Press – Son of slain Iranian-Canadian photojournalist says Iran is playing games – 27 November 2007