A video titled “Three Policemen Abusing the Corpse of a Citizen” was uploaded onto YouTube last week. The short clip, shot on a cellphone by a policeman, shows two of his colleagues mistreating a corpse in the morgue at Al-Khanka Hospital. In the one-minute video, three policemen joke over a bruised and bloody corpse, naked except for a pair of underpants. The policeman filming the scene says: “Let me take a photo for you with him. One photo for LE2.” A second policeman replies: “Take a photo for me while I put a cigarette in his mouth.” He proceeds to place a lit cigarette between the dead man's lips. The policeman recording the video can then be heard saying the word “haram”, meaning that the act was forbidden, and the clip ends. “Playing with the dead body of any citizen is outside society's traditions and values,” says Hafez Abu Seida, head of the Egyptian Organisation for Human Rights (EOHR). The EOHR has called on the prosecutor-general to investigate and refer those responsible to trial. Article 60 of the constitution states that “the human body is inviolable and any assault, deformation or mutilation committed against it is a crime punishable by law.” Major General Mahmoud Youssri, security chief of Qalyubia governorate, said Interior Minister Mohamed Ibrahim has formed a committee to investigate the policemen who are shown on film. The ministry has confirmed that the dead man seen in the video was Mohamed Sultan. He is reported to have earlier escaped from a police station after being accused of killing a doctor and stealing his car. “When police attempted to re-arrest him he started shooting at them. He was injured in the clash, transferred to hospital, but died before receiving treatment,” says Youssri. Public revulsion at what appears to be unreformed police behaviour was compounded in the same week when reports were published of the sexual abuse of an 18-year-old mentally handicapped woman in Imbaba police station. The Ministry of Interior issued a statement on 28 August in response to media reports about the incident of sexual abuse at Imbaba police station. It said the policeman accused of abusing the handicapped woman has been referred to state security prosecutors who are investigating the incident. Hisham Abdel-Hameed, spokesman of the Forensic Medicine Authority, says evidence that could have helped to prove the victim's claims of sexual abuse, including the clothes she was wearing during the alleged assault, are missing. He added that medical examinations have not uncovered anything to support the allegations. In a statement issued on Saturday, the EOHR called for a full investigation. The statement reported that the victim was detained at Imbaba police station after she reported being harassed by two men in the area. “She survived one attempt at harassment only to be abused by a policeman who took her outside the area covered by cameras in the police station and proceeded to assault her, according to the testimony of detainees who witnessed the incident,” said the statement. Recently amended articles of the penal code stipulate between six months and five years imprisonment for anyone found guilty of sexual harassment. Should the perpetrator be in a position of power or trust the upper range of sentencing is recommended. Article 268 of the Penal Code sets a tariff of between three and seven years, with hard labour, for anyone convicted of rape. Major General Mohamed Anwar Hegab, former undersecretary at General Intelligence, told Al-Shourouk newspaper that 15 per cent of low-ranking policemen are probably unfit for police work. The Interior Ministry is believed to employ 380,000 policemen. Prior to the 25 January Revolution, policemen were paid between LE500 and LE700 a month. Although their brutal mistreatment of citizens was a major reason behind the uprising, they are one of the few groups to have benefitted from changes following the revolution. Their salaries were more than doubled, and they are now paid between LE1,200 and LE1,500 monthly. Under Mubarak, it was an open secret that the police routinely tortured suspects. The beating to death of Khaled Said in the middle of day on an Alexandrian street and the Ministry of Interior's subsequent denials, backed up by cooked-up forensic reports, that policemen were not responsible for Said's death, fuelled the protests that led to Mubarak's ouster.
