CAIRO: The policemen charged with murdering Khaled Said, the young man who sparked Egypt's uprising, in June 2010, were sentenced to 7 years in jail on Wednesday. The ruling comes after months of court wrangling, which many felt would not send Mahmoud Salah Mahmoud and Awad Ismail Soliman to jail for a lengthy time. The judge dropped the murder charges and handed them the maximum penalty for manslaughter. Many in Egypt had been demanding the full extent of the law, but instead the officers received a watered down verdict. Activists were perturbed at the ruling, saying that average Egyptians who broke curfew following the Egyptian revolution in January and February this year, were also given 7-year sentences. “I think it just shows that the military rulers in this country are no different than Mubarak and are not going to give justice to killers and murderers in this country,” said Ahmed Radwan, a 24-year-old graduate student at Cairo University. “We have to take justice in our own hands.” On Sunday, June 6 at 11.30 p.m., young Khaled Said, 28-years-old, from Alexandria, was in an Internet café in the district of Cleopatra when a group of police informers entered the café and started inquiring about the internet users. Said was attacked as a result of posting videos that showed police corruption. He was openly beaten in the streets next to the Internet cafe where he was picked up from. A photo of Said's dead body that showed the marks of torture was published on the Internet and almost immediately went viral, gaining hundreds of thousands of supporters for change in Egypt. “We are all Khaled Said” was created on Facebook and played a great role of mobilizing young people to participate in the January 25 uprising's first days. January 25 was also, ironically, national police day in Egypt. BM
