During the Egyptian revolution of 2011, several female protestors at Tahrir Square were taken into military custody and subjected to torture and virginity tests.
Protestors were evacuated from Tahrir Square on March 9 and military police took at least 18 women into military custody, where they were beaten, electrocuted, and subjected to searches after being stripped, while male soldiers photographed them, and then subjected them to virginity tests and threatened them with prostitution chargings.
In 2012, the court ruled the acquittal of Ahmed Adel, a recruited doctor in the Egyptian Army who conducted the operation to examine the activists' virginity.
Background
Tahrir Square witnessed clashes between supporters of the continuation of the sit-in in the square and those calling for its evacuation, and soldiers and men in civilian clothes destroyed the protesters camps in the middle of Tahrir Square, where people have been camping sporadically since January 28. Military officers arrested at least 20 women, in addition to at least 174 men, and took them all to the Egyptian Museum, where the army had set up a temporary base since the January protests, and tortured them. Human Rights Watch documented how the army beat, flogged, kicked men, hit women, chained them to an iron fence, and shocked them with electricity. Activists said that they were assaulted and beaten inside the Egyptian Museum, and they said that about 17 girls and more than 500 young men who were arrested were taken into custody, and some women activists were arrested and taken to a military zone called Q28 and virginity tests were conducted for them according to two of them and other witnesses.
Victims' testimonies
Samira Ibrahim:
"They were electrocuting us, throwing water on us, cursing us with disgusting words, and there were people hitting you with boots, and they put us in a bus with a huge of women wearing black robes, they let them out in the museum between us, and the girls were cursing the army officers with very disgusting words, and they brought bottles of Molotov and began to photograph us with them as if we were girls of thuggery and prostitution. we stayed that night in the bus and they kept saying: "You ruined the country, what you do want?", and we had four soldiers who kept beating us all night, and then we reached the military prison. I found a picture of the former President Hosni Mubarak, which was hanged in the military prison, one of the women of the army asked me to take off my clothes, and the room in which the women protesters stood was with opened doors and windows, and when they refused, she brought soldiers in, and one of them beat me. I had to take off and then the soldier at the window, standing, laughing and winking at us, and they were soldiers and officers. I wished to die every day, no matter what you say, I will not be able to tell however i tried to speak, and I wish they had enough and just left us, but they divided us into two groups, each group in a cell. we all have been humiliated, and wished to die. And then she told me to take off so that he would reveal you, and then I took off my pants. And after the test he told me: "Come on, sign here that you are a virgin". Other charges were brought against us, including: attempting to assault army officers while they were working, carrying white weapons, breaking the curfew, and disrupting traffic. A prison sentence was issued against me and suspended." Rasha Abdel rahman: