Umm Hashim Abu al-'Izz, a young actress, was detained on 8 February 2002 after her cab driver was stopped by the police and failed to produce all the required documents. She was taken together with the driver and another passenger to the Agouza Police Station in Cairo. She was kicked and punched and severely beaten with a belt on the face and other parts of her body when she protested at insults by a police officer. She later filed a torture complaint. She was interviewed about the complaint by a member of the Public Prosecution Office only three weeks later when bruises on her body had begun to fade. She was never referred for a forensic medical examination. After her release Umm Hashim Abu al-'Izz told Amnesty International: "What happened to me was something I could never have
imagined".

The experience of Umm Hashim Abu al-'Izz is not exceptional. Over the past decade, Egyptian authorities have failed to take necessary action in hundreds or thousands of reported cases of torture. After filing a complaint, torture victims, their relatives and lawyers are unlikely to learn of any progress for weeks or months, or in many cases, years. Where investigations into torture allegations do take place, they may take years to carry out and rarely end with perpetrators being brought to justice.