Two policemen jailed 25 years for torturing suspect to death

An Egyptian Court has on Saturday sentenced two policemen to 25 years in prison for torturing and beating a citizen to death at a police station in Tanta city of Gharbiya province northwest of the capital, Cairo.

Tanta Criminal Court sentenced the convicted captain and non-commissioned officer in absentia.

The court said it had previously sentenced the two policemen to one year in jail for torturing and injuring another citizen at the same police station.

A security source said the case dated back to the arrest of two criminals with theft records and during their interrogation,  they were subjected to torture that left one of them dead and the other wounded.

The source added that the verdict against the two policemen would be appealed.

Egypt had recently witnessed a number of police torture cases, some of which resulted in deaths.

That has led to the uproar of human rights groups who accused the police of brutality.

President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi, and the Interior Ministry, in their responses, referred to them only as “individual cases” and not a general police behavior, stressing that the perpetrators would be punished.