Cairo, Egypt - A rights activist from Egypt's minority Shiite community has been arrested for publishing "false information" on torture in Egyptian prisons, a judicial source told AFP on Tuesday.
Mohammed al-Dereini, who heads the Shiite Aal al-Beit research centre in Cairo, was arrested at his Cairo home at dawn on Monday, the source said.
Dereini is being investigated on charges of publishing "false information aimed at agitating public opinion about torture in Egyptian prisons" in his 2006 book "Hell's Capital."
He faces a separate charge of "insulting religion."
Dereini spent 15 months in prison in 2004-2005 for belonging to an illegal organisation and threatening national security.
Shiites are a tiny minority in Egypt where they account for less than one percent of the 73-million population of mostly Sunni Muslims.
Another Shiite activist, Ahmed Mohammed Sobh, who heads a human rights centre, was arrested on Saturday and will be held for two weeks pending an investigation, the same source said.
Sobh is accused of telling the Al-Ghad opposition daily that hundreds of people had been killed in a secret torture centre. Sobh denies the charge.
"The degree of intolerance against all forms of opposition in Egypt has risen sharply recently," Hossam Bahgat, who heads the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR), told AFP.
A recent clampdown by the Egyptian authorities has targeted journalists, Christian rights activists as well as the usual Sunni Muslim Brotherhood.
"For the state security services, any kind of religious diversity is seen as a threat to national security," Bahgat said.
According to London-based Amnesty International, torture in detention is systematic in Egypt and, in the majority of cases, the perpetrators are not brought to justice.
Egypt says any cases of torture are isolated and charges brought against those who use it.