A human rights advocacy group on Wednesday called for the sacking of Egypt's Interior Minister following violent clashes yesterday between protesters and police forces that killed at least four and injured more than 100. “There is no alternative to the dismissal of the Interior Minister since he is the main one responsible for torture crimes that are perpetrated systematically in Egypt,” said the Cairo-based Arab Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI) in a statement. “Recently, dispersing peaceful rallies by force and detaining hundreds of citizens randomly were added to those crimes,” said the statement. In a surprise showing, tens of thousands of Egyptians took to the streets on Tuesday chanting anti-government slogans, denouncing President Hosni Mubarak's regime and voicing economic grievances. In an attempt to disperse protesters, police deployed gas, rubber bullets and water canons. In the city of Suez, human rights advocates say that the police used live munitions that killed two people at the scene, as well as a third who later died from his injuries. “This is more than enough to dismiss him [the Interior Minister], even if the violations that his ministry perpetrated were known in advance by the president of the republic and the Egyptian government,” said the ANHRI statement. The network contended that the termination of Habib al-Adly's long mandate is “a popular demand” which, if ignored, will “stir more outrage and make things get out of control”. This statement was posted shortly after the group filed complaints with the general prosecutor against the Interior Minister and senior security officials for “the excessive use of force” against demonstrators. In the same complaint, the human rights organization asked for the prosecution of mobile phone service providers for blocking their signal in certain areas of Cairo and Alexandria during the protests and canceling the lines of some political activists. After serving for years in the state security apparatus, al-Adly took over the interior portfolio in 1997, with a special mandate to uproot Islamist military organizations. Since then, al-Adly's apparatus has been blamed for thousands of human rights violations including torture, arbitrary detention and excessive use of the Emergency Law. Last year, the opposition voiced sharp criticism of al-Adly following the fatal beating of a 26-year-old man by two policemen in Alexandria. In the lead-up to yesterday's protests, youth-led opposition groups called on Egyptians to take to the streets to voice a package of economic and political demands which include al-Adly's dismissal.
