Egypt plans festival of torture videos

CAIRO: Egyptian bloggers, long at the forefront of exposing rights abuses, are planning an online festival of torture videos to run alongside the 31st Cairo Film Festival, local media reported on Tuesday.

The parallel festival is the brainchild of a blogger named Walid, the Egyptian Mail reported, and will feature “controversial acts of torture allegedly committed by the security authorities.”

Prizes, including a Golden Whip, will be awarded to the best entrants.

Egypt’s blogosphere has exposed numerous incidents of police torture, including that of minibus driver Imad al-Kabir who was shown being sodomised with a stick in widely distributed video footage shot on a police mobile phone.

Two policemen were jailed for three years earlier this month for that crime.