Witness Reports

Egypt

Egypt

On March 9, 20-year-old Salwa Hosseini was arrested for protesting in Tahrir Square:

She told Amnesty International that “after she was arrested and taken to a military prison in Heikstep, she was made, with the other women, to take off all her clothes to be searched by a female prison guard, in a room with two open doors and a window. During the strip search, Hosseini said male soldiers were looking into the room and taking pictures of the naked women. The women were then subjected to ‘virginity tests’ in a different room by a man in a white coat. They were threatened that 'those not found to be virgins' would be charged with prostitution.”

Journalist Mona Eltahawy described her beating and sexual assault to Human Rights Watch:

They were beating me with their sticks. I lifted my left arm to protect myself but they hit that too, which is when they broke it. While they were hitting me, they were grabbing my breasts and my genital area, putting their hands into my trousers. I kept saying, "Stop it! Stop it!" All this time they were insulting me, saying "You whore, you daughter of…" They then pulled me by my hair toward the Ministry of Interior, still groping me whenever they could. They were like a pack of wild animals.

Sanaa Youssef was arrested during a demonstration in November:

According to her blog, she “was in the midst of around 25 or 30 officers in CSF uniforms and plain clothes. One officer lifted his hand and said, ‘Don’t touch her.’ It was as if this was a secret code to say, ‘Do whatever you want with her.’ One of them hit me on the face and another kicked me while a third pulled me by my hair so that I couldn’t move my head to the right or left, and this helped keep my head still so that they could slap me. I wish it had stopped there, but unfortunately with great pain I have to confess that their hands did not have mercy on my body and they harassed me with all their filth and brutality and lack of conscience. What made it worse is that two of them grabbed the two ends of my scarf around my neck and pulled them in opposite directions. I felt like I was choking and tried to pull the scarf away from my throat while they were continuing to harass me.”