The Egyptian military conducted "virginity checks" on women protesters arrested in Tahrir Square, an official has acknowledged.

Amnesty International had charged in a report that women seized in the March protests were strip-searched, electrocuted, beaten, threatened with prostitution charges and forced to submit to virginity checks.

The allegation had been denied, but CNN reported Monday that an unnamed senior general said the virginity tests were conducted on 17 women to prevent false rape claims.

"The girls who were detained were not like your daughter or mine," the general said. "These were girls who had camped out in tents with male protesters in Tahrir Square, and we found in the tents Molotov cocktails and [drugs]."

"We didn't want them to say we had sexually assaulted or raped them, so we wanted to prove that they weren't virgins in the first place," the general continued. "None of them were [virgins]."



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