Egypt has blocked the website of Human Rights Watch just a day after the organisation released a report on systematic torture in the country's jails.
The report titled "we do unreasonable here, based on the accounts of 19 former detainees and the family of another, claimed Egyptian authorities used arbitrary arrests, enforced disappearances and torture.
Egypt's foreign ministry lambasted the report, on Wednesday, saying it defamed the country and ignored progress made on human rights in recent years.
"The report ... is a new episode in a series of deliberate defamation by such organization, whose politicized agenda and biases are well known and reflect the interests of the entities and countries sponsoring it," said Foreign Ministry spokesman Ahmed Abu Zeid.
In the report, the New York-based rights group said security services in Egypt used torture as a "systematic practice" against suspected opponents of the .government.
"Egyptian authorities keep insisting that any incidents of torture are isolated crimes by bad officers acting alone, but the Human Rights Watch report proves otherwise," Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch, said on Thursday.
"Rather than address the torture crisis in Egypt, the authorities have blocked access to a report that documents what many Egyptians and others living there already know."