Ann Clwyd – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Ann Clwyd on 2016-05-19.

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, what assessment his Department has made of the prevalence of torture in Egyptian detention facilities.

Mr Tobias Ellwood

We remain deeply concerned with reports of torture in Egyptian detention facilities and we have raised this on a number of occasions with senior Egyptian officials in Cairo and in London, most recently on 5 May. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s Annual Human Rights Report 2015 designated Egypt a human rights priority country and recorded that, “In 2015, reports of torture, police brutality, and forced disappearance increased. A local NGO documented reports of 676 cases of torture and 137 deaths in detention.”

The UK unreservedly condemns the use of torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment as a matter of fundamental principle. The UK will continue to be a leader in advocating strong international systems to combat torture in all its forms.