Egypt's foreign minister has sparked outrage by claiming that the country's brutal jails are just like hotels. The bizarre outburst came as Interior Minister deputy for information affairs Abdel Fattah Othman, said, “prisons have become hotels,” in response to torture and rape claims made during an interview aired on ONTV earlier this week.

Othman said: “The prisons’ authority has no interests to torture citizen or rape a prisoner. This is illogical.” The minister even went on to accuse political detainees of fabricating the claims. He added: “News over torture and rape never came up until some political activists were imprisoned.”

We don't know what hotels Othman frequents, but the claims come just months after activists released a video smuggled inside an Egyptian jail cell, showing the squaled conditions inside.
The video sparked outrage among human rights organisations.A report published last month by human rights group Amnesty International said that torture in Egypt remained "endemic."
The group claims that there were mounting reports of torture and other ill-treatment of detainees that "harken back to the most abusive periods under Hosni Mubarak."