The most worrying development of the past few months has been the detentions and trials conducted by the military. It's a very worrying precedent at the very time when people are looking to see how Egypt is going to manage the transitional process in terms of issues of justice and accountability.

The army is presenting itself as taking a strong hand against criminals and thugs, and that resonates with people, but historically this is exactly the kind of rhetoric Mubarak's police state depended on. We need a shift from whoever is governing the country towards the strict application of the rule of law, and that hasn't happened extensively yet.

On certain points there has been progress but the picture is always mixed. The interim government, for example, has allowed the formation of independent trade unions but at the same time we've seen a draft law banning strikes and protests, which is very problematic. There's also been a liberalisation of the political parties law, allowing new parties to be created, and that freedom of association is an essential prerequisite to fair elections later this year. But for elections to take place you also need an environment which respects freedom of assembly and freedom of expression; the draft law contravenes that freedom of assembly, and when it comes to freedom of expression the military has been setting red lines regarding what is acceptable criticism of the country's current rulers and what isn't.

We also need to see genuine prosecutions of officers from the state security agency because prosecutions re-establish the principle of the rule of law, and they give justice to victims – who don't forget. We have seen some court cases but they are for events that took place from 25 January onwards, as if police abuse started that day. Trials of police officers accused of violence have been disrupted by angry families and that kind of rage has built up over the years precisely because there was this sense of impunity for the security services that was prevalent in the past.

Arbitrary arrests of protesters by the military have taken place on numerous occasions. At least 85 demonstrators who were detained on 9 March are still in Tora prison [the same jail where Mubarak's sons and other former regime figures are being held]. The military wants to intimidate people not to protest on the street; all of these guys were taken to the grounds of the Egyptian Museum and tortured – beaten, whipped, subjected to electric shocks from stun guns. They weren't interrogated, and the aim was never to extract information from them. Officers told them "you are the ones ruining the revolution, we haven't been home for 60 days because of you". They were tried in groups of 25 at a time, in military court cases which only lasted 30 minutes, then all sentenced to up to five years behind bars.

There have been 5,600 military tribunal sentences like this since Mubarak fell, yet the activists investigating army abuses are not garnering much support from the public or the media. Those 9 March detainees were in Tahrir throughout the uprising; like a lot of young people they weren't necessarily very politicised before but they got swept up in the hope and empowerment of the square, and when they felt the demands of the revolution weren't being fulfilled – even after Mubarak was toppled – they went back there. And now they're in prison. The other day they wrote me a letter which read: "As long as there is hope, nothing is impossible."