WATANI International
27 June 2010
The alleged beating to death of the 28-year-old Alexandrian Khaled Saïd at the hands of two policemen has incensed rights activists in Egypt—to say nothing of the majority of mainstream Egyptians.
Saïd died on June 6 following an encounter with two plainclothes policemen at an Internet Cafe in Alexandria. Seven witnesses have testified before the prosecution that he was beaten to death in the street. A picture circulated after his death showed his jaw split, teeth broken and blood pouring from his head.
Dismissive cover-up
The Interior Ministry’s explanation that Saïd choked to death after swallowing a packet of drugs when the police approached him served to incense activists even more. Police officials denied Saïd had died of torture, saying the young man was wanted for various legal offenses, and died after attempting to swallow a packet of drugs and choking to death. The damage to his face in the photograph was due to the autopsy, forensic doctors said in state newspapers.
The ministry statement and the initial investigation in the case outraged Egyptians at large who viewed the official response as a dismissive cover up.
And while the public prosecutor ordered a new autopsy to be made after the initial investigation absolved police of any responsibility in the death, the international rights group Amnesty International called for an “immediate, full and independent investigation, in line with international standards, into the brutal killing.”
Saïd’s body is now being re-examined by the country’s top coroners.
For his part, the former head of the Forensic medicine Authority Fakhri Saleh said it was impossible to cause any bruises or bleeding injuries to a body after death. He welcomed the move to conduct a new autopsy, saying that the pictures posted of the body can in no way alone give a definite notion of the nature of the injuries.
Protest
Meanwhile, a string of demonstrations and protests have been conducted to denounce the killing and the police brutality. In central Cairo last Sunday the police clashed with dozens of activists and arrested at least 30 demonstrators. Witnesses said police beat protestors and confiscated two reporters’ cameras.
While Alexandrians dressed in black and stood facing the sea in complete silence before marching away single filed, Cairenes were not allowed to organise a similar silent non-violent protest in Cairo, on the same day and at the same hour. One participant said: “we were harrassed and pushed away by policemen saying that it is ‘not allowed’ to stand wearing black on the banks of the Nile.”
A Flash Mob was organised in Egypt by the Facebook fan page, “We are Khaled Saïd” who was, according to his family and friends, killed after he posted a video on the Internet of officers sharing the spoils from a drug bust among themselves.
The ‘Silent Protest’, as it is called on Facebook, included live stories, as well as pictures and videos. Pictures of the riot policemen dragging protesters away disseminated overnight on Facebook. Security forces, some of them in plainclothes, beat protesters and knocked some to the ground. They put them in headlocks and handcuffed them before dragging them off to waiting trucks for arrest.
Police brutality
The death of Saïd has become a rallying point for government critics who say it is a typical example of rampant police abuses made possible by the three-decade-old repressive emergency law. Activists have dubbed Saïd “the emergency law martyr”.
The government has pledged to prosecute offenders, but denies that torture is systematic.
Several MPs have condemned the police brutality even though they refused to link it to the emergency law. “The trouble is not with the emergency law,” MP Mohamed al-Qirani said, “which should only be applied in cases of drug trafficking and terrorism. The law is being abused by the police.”
MP Georgette Qellini said that, even though she never voted to extend the emergency law, she could not put Saïd’s killing to the account of the emergency law. Police brutality, she said, was not about the passage of any law but was about the indignity and cruelty with which Egyptians are treated by the police. This has become some sort of police culture which must change, Ms Qellini said. “The Saïd case, by its very atrocity, found its way to the media; but countless other cases never make it to the papers.”
“Police brutality,” she stressed, “must stop.”