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Wednesday
Mar062013

Egypt (and Beyond) Live Coverage: Top Mubarak Ally Sentenced to 37 Years in Prison

1900 GMT: Bahrain. Claimed footage of police firing tear gas at three women:

1730 GMT: Libya. The car of Mohamed Magarief, the head of the General National Congress, came under fire in Tripoli as he left a chaotic session of the assembly disrupted by protesters.

There were no casualties.

The Minister of Interior, Ashur Shwayel said the gunmen were demanding that legislators pass a bill barring former associates of ousted leader Muammar Qaddafi.

Magarief survived a gun attack at his home in January.

1450 GMT: Iraq. In Fallujah, "dozens of families" have alleged that their relatives on death row are subject to "systematic torture". Speaking to Al Jazeera's Jane Arraf, the families claimed that the prisoners, charged with terrorism offences, have experienced "months of torture in an attempt to extract confessions".

The Justice Ministry denies the accusations. The Ministry also refuses to reveal the number of prisoners who have received a death sentence and the charges against them.

One prisoner, speaking from inside jail, told Al Jazeera:

"They kept on torturing us … until we signed certain papers. We didn't know what was on them," he said, speaking from a mobile phone obtained by bribing a guard. "We were not referred to a judge at all. The investigative officers came to us asking us to confess to release our wives, or they would never see daylight again."

He said in one prison up to 20 people were kept in a small bathroom. "They put us in this bathroom handcuffed and every three hours they call for investigation and then the torture session starts," he said.

Those who could pay $40,000 to $100,000 were allowed to go free, he said. Those who couldn't pay were forced to implicate people they didn't know in crimes if they wanted their own wives and children to be freed, he added.

"I've been in five prisons so far and I've seen mostly young people or elderly ones, all of them held under Article 4," he said. "Some of them were arrested in place of their cousins, or brothers or relatives … Even now whenever they take us to any prison once they know we are kept under Article 4 terrorism, they start beating or torturing us or putting us in solitary confinement."

1420 GMT: Egypt . A court has suspended the Parliamentary elections, scheduled to begin on 22 April.

The four-stage vote for the lower house was due to end in June.

1220 GMT: Egypt . Steel tycoon Ahmed Ezz, a insider of the former Mubarak regime, has been sentenced to a further 37 years in prison for embezzling up to $740 million.

The court in Cairo stated that Ezz was aided by the former Ministry of Industry, who is serving a one-year sentence.

Ezz is already serving a 17-year sentence for money laundering through his steel firm. He was arrested in the days following the end of the Mubarak regime in febuary 2011.

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