A Cairo criminal court set 15 February as the start date for the trial of two policemen charged with beating 21-year-old Mohamed "Afroto" Abdel-Hakim Mahmoud to death while he was in police custody in Moqattam, Cairo, earlier this month. Mohamed Afroto was arrested earlier in January on charges of drug dealing and taken to the police station. The accused pair, an officer and a low-ranking policeman, denied they beat Afroto, saying that he passed away due to a drug overdose. The preliminary autopsy report of Egypt's forensic authority contradicted that story, stating that the young painter died due to "severe laceration of the spleen and abdominal bleeding."
