In April and May 2002, scores of Egyptians were detained for their alleged affiliation with Hizb al-Tahrir al-Islami (Islamic Liberation Party) which is banned in Egypt. Many of them were held for weeks in incommunicado detention and Amnesty International received information that several of them were subjected to electric shocks and other forms of torture or ill-treatment. Four British citizens, Maajid Nawaz, Ian Malcolm Nisbett, Reza Pankhurst and Hassan Rizfi, were detained on 1 April 2002 on suspicion of affiliation with the Hizb al-Tahrir al-Islami (Islamic Liberation Party). The four detainees were held in incommunicado detention. The first time the four men had contact with the outside world was on 11 April 2002, when representatives of the British Embassy in Cairo were allowed to visit them at Mazraat


Tora Prison.
The detainees reported that they had been subjected to torture and ill-treatment and that one of them had been subjected to electric shocks.

"Existing safeguards for detainees are insufficient, frequently breached, overridden by emergency law procedures and Law 97 of 1992 for Combating Terrorism and, in practice, fail to protect detainees from serious human rights violations," Amnesty International said.