Human Rights Watch releases a new report on Egypt's response to last year's Taba bombing:

Egyptian human rights groups said that security forces had rounded up as many as three thousand persons, including several hundred persons detained solely to secure the surrender of wanted family members. The government has officially neither confirmed nor contested that figure, although one North Sinai security official insisted anonymously that the number being held in early December was “only” around eight hundred. As of early February, the government has still provided no information to families or legal counsel regarding the number of persons in detention or their whereabouts. On January 28, between five hundred and one thousand demonstrators reportedly clashed with police in al-`Arish when they tried to stage a march protesting the detentions...In every one of the score of cases that Human Rights Watch investigated, the SSI had detained persons without informing them of the reasons for their detention. They were usually picked up in pre-dawn raids on their homes. Officials typically kept detainees in local SSI offices for three or four days, and in some cases well over a week, without charging them. The authorities released some but most of the detained individuals were transferred to Tora prison in Cairo and Damanhur Prison in the Nile Delta. Human Rights Watch has been unable to learn if these detainees were charged at the time of transfer or since. Most of those detained, it appeared, were or were considered to be Islamists—that is, persons favoring a system of governance that accords with what they consider to be core Islamic principles. Family members told Human Rights Watch that they were afraid to “cause trouble” by pressing officials for information about detained relatives. They learned only informally, if at all, about the whereabouts of their husbands, sons, fathers, and brothers from those who had been with them in detention but were now released. This lack of knowledge was especially painful to families because of widespread reports that detainees were subjected to torture and ill-treatment during interrogation. These reports were consistent with documented practices of the SSI in politically-charged investigations. Human Rights Watch interviewed several former detainees who provided credible accounts of torture they underwent at the hands of SSI interrogators. Others spoke of seeing fellow detainees who had been badly tortured, and hearing the screams of those being abused. Given that those most likely to have been tortured are among the hundreds if not thousands of persons still in detention, and that many of those released fear the possible consequences of meeting with independent human rights monitors, Human Rights Watch believes that torture and ill-treatment by the SSI has been widespread in connection with the investigations into the Taba attacks.