2009, a year of 'serious abuses' for Egypt and Libya: HRW.

12009 , a year of ` serious abuses ' for Egypt and Libya : HRW . 2Egypt must revoke its `` draconian emergency law '' and Libya should free unjustly detained prisoners , Human Rights Watch said on Sunday . 3`` Both Egypt 's and Libya 's human rights records will come under intense scrutiny by the UN Human Rights Council in 2010 , '' said Sarah Leah Whitson , Middle East director at Human Rights Watch . 4Whitson was in Cairo to present the world report review of countries in the Middle East , entitled `` Egypt and Libya : A Year of Serious Abuses '' which details the state of human rights in 2009 . 5`` Egyptian security services need to understand that their thuggery confirms the international image of Egypt as a police state , while Libyan security forces continue to dominate political space in Libya in an atmosphere of fear , '' she said . 6She called on Egypt to repeal the emergency law and revamp it security services . 7The government has `` broken its promises -LRB- to end the emergency law -RRB- over and over again to its shame and discredit , '' Whitson said , adding that torture and abuse in Egypt were `` pervasive '' . 8Egypt has been operating under a state of emergency since the 1981 assassination of president Anwar Sadat , and it has been renewed repeatedly since then despite protests from rights groups and regime opponents . 9HRW also called on the Libyan government to `` immediately release unjustly detained prisoners , reveal the fate of disappeared prisoners , provide justice to the families of victims of the killings of 1,200 inmates in 1996 in Abu Salim prison and reform laws that criminalise free speech and association . ''