Egypt jails 21 girls over pro-Morsi demonstration

November 28, 2013

Cairo, Nov 28: A court in Egypt has sentenced 21 female supporters of ousted President Mohammed Morsi to 11 years in prison.

They were found guilty of multiple charges, including belonging to a terrorist group, obstructing traffic, sabotage and using force at a protest in the city of Alexandria last month.

Seven are under 18 years of age and will be sent to a juvenile prison.

Human rights groups criticised the sentences, with one campaigner describing the verdict as madness.

The women and girls had taken part in an early morning demonstration in support of Mr Morsi.

Relatives say it was the first protest by the group, called the 7am movement, and that it was peaceful.

One family told the BBC their 15-year-old daughter was only passing by on her way to school.

A defence lawyer said the women expected to be sentenced to a month in jail at most.

But the BBC's Orla Guerin in Cairo says that instead they have been given longer jail terms than police convicted of killing or seriously injuring civilians.

The court also sentenced six Muslim Brotherhood leaders to 15 years in prison for inciting the protest.

One report said the men had been tried in absentia.

The verdicts come after the arrest of dozens of secular activists in Cairo, including another group of women who say they were beaten, harassed and left stranded in the desert.

They were demonstrating against a stringent new law which all but bans public protests, part of a crackdown the interim authorities have portrayed as a struggle against "terrorism".

Also some 17 clerics linked to the Islamist movement to which Mr Morsi belongs were arrested in the Nile Delta town of Gharbiya, the state news agency Mena reported.

They are accused of using mosques and sermons to incite unrest against the army and police.

Mena also said that eight people would be put on trial on charges of abducting and torturing a lawyer during the 2011 uprising that toppled former President Hosni Mubarak.

The defendants include Mahmoud al-Khodeiry, a former judge close to the Brotherhood, Osama Yassin, who served as youth minister under Mr Morsi, and Ahmed Mansour, a presenter for al-Jazeera television.

Hundreds of people have also been killed in clashes since security forces cleared two sit-ins in Cairo by people demanding Mr Morsi's reinstatement in August.

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UN condemns Israeli regime’s ‘organized torture’ against Palestinians

News Network

November 30,2025

The United Nations Committee against Torture (CAT) has condemned the Israeli regime for enforcing a policy of “organized torture” against Palestinians.

In a report published on Friday, CAT stated that the occupying regime enforces a deliberate policy of “organized and widespread torture and ill-treatment” against Palestinian abductees, particularly since October 7, 2023, when Israel launched its genocidal war on Gaza.

The committee expressed “deep concern over repeated severe beatings, dog attacks, electrocution, water-boarding, use of prolonged stress positions [and] sexual violence” inflicted on Palestinians.

Palestinian prisoners were degraded by “being made to act like animals or being urinated on,” systematically denied medical care, and subjected to excessive restraints, “in some cases resulting in amputation,” the report added.

CAT also condemned the routine application of “unlawful combatants law” to justify the prolonged detention without trial of thousands of Palestinian men, women, and children.

More than 10,000 Palestinians, including women and children, are currently held in Israeli prisons, according to Palestinian and international human rights groups, with 3,474 Palestinians in “administrative detention,” meaning they are imprisoned without trial for indefinite periods.

The report highlighted the “high proportion of children who are currently detained without charge or on remand,” noting that while Israel sets the age of criminal responsibility at 12, even younger children have been abducted.

Children designated as security prisoners face severe restrictions on family contact, may be subjected to solitary confinement, and are denied access to education, in clear violation of international law.

The committee further suggested that Israel’s policies across the Occupied Territories constitute collective torture against the Palestinian population.

“A range of policies adopted by Israel in the course of its continued unlawful presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory amounts to cruel, inhuman or degrading living conditions for the Palestinian population,” the report said.

On Thursday, the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas condemned the systematic killing and torture of Palestinian abductees in Israeli prisons, urging international action to halt these abuses.

Citing human rights data, Hamas stated that 94 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli prisons since the start of Tel Aviv’s genocidal war on Gaza.

“This reflects an organized criminal approach that has turned these prisons into direct killing grounds to eliminate our people,” the resistance movement said.

Hamas called on the international community, the UN, and human rights organizations to immediately pressure Israel to end crimes against prisoners and uphold their rights as guaranteed by all international conventions and norms.

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