American limo driver allegedly tortured in Egyptian prison

CAIRO — An American citizen accused of joining the Islamic State was detained by Egyptian authorities and held in secret for four months in an Egyptian prison where he was allegedly tortured and raped, Human Rights Watch said Thursday.

The watchdog group said Egyptian national security agents arrested and “forcibly disappeared” Khaled Hassan, 41, a limousine driver from New York, on Jan. 8 in the coastal city of Alexandria. Hassan was born in Egypt and became a naturalized American several years ago, the group said.

In the following weeks, security forces “severely beat him, gave him electric shocks including on his genitals, and anally raped him in at least two incidents, once with a wooden stick and once by another man,” Human Rights Watch said in a statement.

Egyptian authorities, responding to a letter sent by the watchdog group, denied the allegations of torture. But the group said that independent forensic experts reviewed footage of Hassan’s wounds and found them consistent with torture. The group urged Egyptian prosecutors to open an investigation into the torture claims.

Despite efforts by Hassan’s family to get information about his whereabouts from Egyptian authorities immediately after his disappearance, it wasn’t until May 3 that they learned he had been imprisoned. Egyptian authorities told Human Rights Watch that Hassan was only arrested on that day.

That was also when Hassan appeared before a military prosecutor and was accused, along with hundreds of other defendants, of joining the Islamic State affiliate in Egypt’s volatile northern Sinai province to spy on the army and plot violent attacks.

Hassan spoke with Human Rights Watch and denied the allegations.