Ain Shams University suspended oral and practical exams in its faculty of engineering for one week starting on 20 May, in anticipation of demonstrations over the killing of student Islam Salaheddin. The suspension was preceded by the resignation of the faculty's Students' Union (SU), citing the faculty's “inability to protect students”. Heavy security measures were put in force on 23 May inside and outside the university campus by the security forces in order to make sure no fourth-year students were allowed in. When student Salaheddin was sitting his final exam on 19 May, an unknown man accompanied by a students' affairs employee stepped into the exam hall and asked him to come to the students' affairs department to finish incomplete papers after finishing his exam. Salaheddin, a senior student who was about to graduate, was then taken to an unknown place. On 20 May, he was found dead in the desert near New Cairo. His mother, weeping, said “my son's two ribs were broken. His left arm was broken. His skull was broken in the back and front. My beloved son was tortured before being killed. He was shot in the chest and abdomen.” “I want rights for my son,” said the mother, directing her demand to president Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi. “Who killed my child? He was my eyes. He was my breath. Why was he killed,” demanded the mother, with no one being able to give her an answer. Such questions were also asked by the student's colleagues and posted on the SU Facebook page. According to the SU statement, faculty cameras show Salaheddin leaving the exam hall with two men following him. Then he is seen just outside the camera's range with the same two men chasing him. Salaheddin then disappeared. “For the rest of the day, Salaheddin's family and friends did not know his whereabouts until family members found his body at the desert road of the Fifth Settlement in New Cairo,” the SU statement read. Immediately after the incident, the Ministry of the Interior issued a press release stating that Salaheddin was “a member of the terrorist group that killed police officer Wael Tahoon” last month. Tahoon was killed by two masked men on a motorcycle while leaving his house in the Ain Shams district of Cairo. “Salaheddin was killed after he clashed with security forces chasing him,” the Interior Ministry statement said. According to the statement, Salaheddin had been changing his hiding places regularly as he was hiding from the police after killing the police officer. “Salaheddin was about to flee to an Upper Egyptian governorate to hide from the police when they found him. During the subsequent fight he was shot dead,” the statement added. But according to the SU statement, “all the words in the world are not enough to describe the lies, slander, and criminality which the security forces use against young people. These cold-blooded killings, accusations and unfair trials cannot be described as anything less than fascist acts,” it said. Ayman Ashour, the dean of the faculty of engineering at Ain Shams University, said he doubted what was said in the Interior Ministry statement. “Salaheddin was not in hiding. He attended his first two final exams on Saturday and Tuesday at the faculty,” Ashour stated. He issued a statement confirming that Salaheddin was present for his exams until Tuesday and denied that he was arrested inside the university campus. Meanwhile, students requested the dean to explain why an unknown security official was allowed inside the exam hall. “No police officer was allowed onto the campus, whether wearing his official uniform or in casual clothes,” Ashour said. Khaled Abdel-Aal, a member of the campaign group Students against the Coup, said that Salaheddin had been taken off campus and kidnapped while there. “Salaheddin was a normal student who participated, like many hundreds of other students, in protests against the oppression and killing of our colleagues in different universities. He did not kill Tahoon.” “Most people know that Tahoon was involved with drug-dealers. The way he was killed was very professional. It was gang behaviour, not something a student could have done,” Abdel-Aal said. If the Ministry of Interior is unable to catch Tahoon's killer and wants to scapegoat Salaheddin, then this is another matter, he added. According to a recent report by the Association for Freedom of Thought and Expression, a NGO operating on university campuses, more than 20 students have died during or as a result of on-campus violence over the past two years.
