Egypt holds Al Jazeera reporter over torture tapes

CAIRO, Jan 14 (Reuters) Egyptian authorities detained a journalist from Arabic Al Jazeera television over what they described as fabricated images of torture found in her possession, judicial sources said.

The arrest of Huweida Taha Metwalli comes as Egypt faces rising pressure over police misconduct after a tape purportedly showing officers sodomising a minibus driver with a stick was circulated widely on the Internet late last year.

That tape focused attention on treatment that local and international rights groups say is common in Egyptian jails, and ultimately led to the arrest of two police officers suspected of involvement in abuse.

Al Jazeera correspondent in Cairo Samir Omar said Metwalli was a producer who had been working on a documentary on torture in Egyptian police stations and was arrested in connection with video clips of torture found in her possession.

Omar said Metwalli's work was ''sound'', and that the videos that police confiscated had included the well-known sodomy footage that has circulated on Egyptian blogs since November.

Metwalli was being held on charges of undermining national interests and possession of fabricated images, judicial sources said. State news agency MENA said she was accused of ''seeking the help of some youth to film fabricated scenes as incidents of torture'' and that she planned to air those images on Al Jazeera.

Omar said Egyptian authorities had blocked Metwalli from travelling to Qatar where Al Jazeera is based earlier this week, and ultimately decided to detain her yesterday pending an investigation.

A lawyer for Imad al-Kabir, who appears being sodomised in the one video, has said his client was tortured by police officers in January 2006 in a police station in the west Cairo suburb of Bulaq al-Dakrur after he tried to intervene in a dispute between the police and his brother.

Kabir came forward only after the tape was aired on the Internet. His lawyer said that after he filed a complaint with authorities the officers threatened him and his family.

Earlier this week Kabir was jailed for three months with hard labour on charges, linked to the same incident, of resisting authorities and assaulting a police officer.

The two policemen accused of torturing Kabir also appeared in court this week in the early stages of their separate trial.

The court refused to release them on bail.

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