after torture, sexual assault
Detained Egyptian activist waiting for medical treatment days

An Egyptian political activist who said that he was tortured and sexually assaulted last week had a forensic medical exam Sunday but has not been treated for his injuries, his lawyer said.

¶   Mohammed el-Sharkawi, 24, said he was beaten and sodomized with a rolled up piece of cardboard Thursday at a Cairo police station after being arrested following a peaceful protest.

¶   "He has severe pain in his ribs and bleeds when he urinates. It's no exaggeration when we say his life is in danger," el-Sharkawi's lawyer, Gamal Eid, said.

¶   Leila Soueif, who saw el-Sharkawi Sunday while visiting her son, Alaa Abdel Fattah, another political activist who shares the same cell, said el-Sharkawi was in pain, still bruised and couldn't sit down.

¶   Several calls Sunday by The Associated Press to a government spokesman for comment on the activist's case were not answered.

¶   Thursday's protest was in support of a group of judges calling for the independence of the judiciary. It also marked the year anniversary of a protest when police sexually harassed and were violent toward female activists and journalists.

¶   Although Sunday's medical examination came in response to a demand by Eid and political activists, the lawyer was pessimistic that authorities would release the results to him for use in building a case.

¶   "From my 20 years experience with such cases, they remain open until public opinion calms down and then are closed," he told The Associated Press.

¶   Another political activist, Karim el-Sha'er, who was also grabbed by plainclothes policemen from a downtown Cairo street after the protest, said he was badly beaten at the same Cairo police station.

Prosecutors on Friday ordered the pair detained for 15 days pending an investigation.

¶   El-Sharkawi and el-Sha'er, who are members of a group called Youth for Change, were redetained following their release last week after spending a month in jail for participating in an earlier protest supporting the judges.

¶   Several opposition movements, including Kifaya, or Enough, issued statements condemning the way police have treated peaceful protesters.

"Kifaya will continue on its path; we are ready to pay the price for freedom no matter how dear, and such low assaults won't make us give up our cause," the movement said in a statement it posted Sunday on its Web site.

¶   Kifaya also put on its site Sunday a letter from el-Sharkawi that it obtained from a visitor to his jail cell.

¶   "In the police station things were different," he wrote comparing his treatment there with the handling he received on the street. "The beating was more professional, oncentrating on particular (body) parts with high skill in torture methods and showing a high level of sadism."

¶   He wrote about his sexual assault in the letter and said police brought up his mother's poor health in an attempt to demoralize him. "They told me that my mother is sick in Alexandria and that she will die before seeing me."

¶   Police arrested more than 600 people during the past two months in conjunction with protests in support of the judges. Most of the arrested are members of the Muslim Brotherhood, a banned but tolerated fundamentalist group. Kifaya says 60 of its activists arrested in April are still being held. Other detainees are from various leftist groups.

Associated Press