Accusations that a 28-year-old man was brutally beaten to death by the police have provoked a wave of public unrest, reports Mohamed El-Sayed The disputed circumstances surrounding the death of Khaled Said in the Sidi Gaber district of Alexandria on 6 June continue to provoke reactions at home and abroad. According to the Ministry of Interior Said choked to death when he swallowed a packet filled with marijuana after being apprehended by two undercover policemen in a cyber cafe. An ambulance was called after he collapsed on the ground but he died before reaching hospital. Said, claimed the Interior Ministry, was a known drug user and wanted on two charges. Said's family, eyewitnesses, and human rights groups give a very different account of his death. "The plain clothed policemen took Khaled from the cyber cafe and took him to the entrance of the opposite building where they began to bang his head against the stone steps," says Hassan Misbah, the owner of the cyber cafe. "After a while they came out of the entrance. Khaled looked dead." Then, says Misbah, they took his body in a police vehicle to the police station only to return ten minutes later and dump the body in front of the cyber cafe. Other eyewitnesses who spoke to Al-Ahram Weekly said the policemen repeatedly banged Said's head against a metal door and continued to beat him for 20 minutes. A photo of the victim's shattered face, his jaw clearly broken, rib cage mangled and skull cracked, later found its way to the Internet. A page was created in Said's name on the social networking website Facebook, attracting over 159,000 of members in less than a week. "Why did undercover policemen go to arrest Khaled?" asked a statement issued by the Al-Nadeem Centre for the Rehabilitation of Victims of Violence and Torture. "Did they have an arrest warrant? If the Ministry of Interior's statement claiming that Khaled was wanted on two counts is true, why didn't the police go to his house and arrest him? They needed only to turn up in uniform, with an arrest warrant." The centre said it could not rule out the possibility that the plastic bag with marijuana was "forcefully stuffed down Said's throat after he was dead". In its initial statement, the Ministry of Interior said that the photograph of injuries to Khaled's head was taken in the morgue and that the disfigurements were due to the autopsy in which forensic doctors cut away his jaw to remove the bag of marijuana. The Al-Nadeem Centre questions the competence of the Sidi Gaber prosecutor, "a legal and not a medical graduate, to determine that the fractures and disfigurements to Khaled's face and head were the result of autopsy." "And what," it asks, "was the forensic department looking for that necessitated fracturing Khaled's skull, dislocating his jaw and causing such massive disfigurement? Were they looking for narcotics inside his skull, despite the Interior Ministry claiming the packet was lodged in his trachea?" The real reason for Khaled's murder, says his brother Ahmed, "is that he had a mobile video footage showing police officers at Sidi Gaber police station sharing the spoils from a drug bust." "Khaled intended to publish the video on the Internet, exposing the police officers involved," says Khaled's mother. The footage had already been widely circulated on mobile phones in Alexandria. When it did find its way to YouTube it attracted over 200,000 viewers. Khaled's alleged murder at the hands of police has caused a wave of public anger in Alexandria and Cairo. On Saturday hundreds of protesters gathered outside the Sidi Gaber mosque and police station to denounce the "brutal killing of the Emergency Law martyr," as Khaled has been dubbed by activists. Five protesters, most members of The 6th April Youth Movement, were detained for "threatening security and attempting to break into the police station." On Sunday a string of demonstrations were staged in Cairo's Lazoghli, Al-Isaaf and Talaat Harb Squares with protesters holding up photographs of Said, some showing him alive, others the infamous image of his battered body. Demonstrators in Lazoghli Square, close to the headquarters of the Interior Ministry, were vastly outnumbered by security forces. As they chanted "Khaled was murdered and [Minister of Interior Habib] El-Adly is responsible," the demonstrators were targeted by security forces, some in plain clothes, handcuffed and dragged to waiting trucks. Muslim Brotherhood MPs Hamdi Hassan and Hamdein Sabbahi have called for an investigation into the "brutal and unjustified killing of Khaled Said by undercover police." On Friday Amnesty International demanded an independent investigation into the 28-year-old's death. "The shocking pictures... are a rare, firsthand glimpse of the routine use of brutal force by the Egyptian security forces, who expect to operate in a climate of impunity, with no questions asked," Amnesty International said in a statement. The group urged the Egyptian government to "rein in" its security forces. On Sunday the Ministry of Interior issued yet another statement, denying the "testimonies of eyewitnesses as well as reports by human rights organisations regarding the killing of Khaled Said in Alexandria." It described the accounts of eyewitnesses as "inaccurate, flagrant falsification, which cross the line in disseminating lies." The investigation into Said's death was referred on Sunday to Alexandria's Appeals Court. Following the wave of public protests, though, Attorney-General Abdel-Meguid Mahmoud ordered on Tuesday that a new autopsy be conducted.
