E/CN.4/1993/26 page 42 not exceed 10 lashes. The punishment of whipping is applied in all prisons including the Tora prisons - by tying up the prisoner, half naked, to a wooden structure. In addition, Law 396 also allows solitary confinement as a disciplinary punishment for prisoners, restricting the duration of a single penalty to no more than 15 days. According to the information received, this period is often exceeded in the Tora prisons complex and some detainees spend the whole period of their administrative detention in solitary confinement. 177. According to the reports, torture victims do not normally make formal complaints, either because they do not believe any steps will be taken to investigate them or because they fear reprisals. The public prosecution finds it sufficient merely to record its observation of signs of physical abuse but does not engage in a serious effort to pursue the culprits. (b) Individual cases transmitted to the Government 178. Mohammad Mu'taz'Ali'Abd al-Karim was 15 years old when he was arrested and tortured in 1990. On the first occasion, in May, he was held for two months. He was at liberty for only two weeks before he was rearrested and he remained in detention until 4 January 1991. During this time he was held by the SSI in Minya, in Upper Egypt, and in Istiqbal Tora prison outside Cairo; he was held in solitary confinement in a basement cell for about a month. He was blindfolded and his hands and feet were tied. He was reportedly stripped of his clothes and suspended from a bar resting on two tables. The soles of his feet were beaten. When his feet became swollen he was made to run or cold water was poured over them to bring the swelling down. 179. Hana''Ali Farrag was a 17-year-old student when she was arrested at her home in Minya towards the end of July 1990. She was suspended from a bar upside down and beaten on the soles of her feet with a thick wooden stick. 180. Dr. Ahmed Isma'il Mahmoud, a medical doctor, was arrested on 17 October 1990 when mass arrests followed the assassination of the Speaker of the People's Assembly, and was accused of having links with the Muslim Brothers. He was held initially at the SSI centre in Gaber bin Hayyan Street where he was blindfolded and stripped of his clothes, and his hands and feet bound tightly. He was said to have been beaten hard on the face and electric shocks were applied to his genitals. This treatment continued for four days, during which he was reportedly denied food and left alone, with no clothes, in a filthy room. He was taken to Abu Za'abal prison where he remained for 11 days, and was then transferred to the SSI Lazoughly Square headquarters, where the torture reportedly continued, in particular the electric shocks. 181. Mohammad Khalaf Youssef, a teacher, was arrested at his home in Asyut on the night of 15/16 December 1990. During his detention he was severely beaten, his wife threatened with torture, given electric shocks to sensitive parts of the body and suspended from the wrists. 182. Adel Sayyid Qassim Sha'ban was arrested in November 1990 in connection with the assassination in October 1990 of the former Speaker of the People's Assembly. During his detention he was beaten on various parts of the body, given electric shocks and suspended from his hands bound behind his back.