CAIRO: Security bodies on Sunday violently broke up a peaceful demonstration protesting the alleged beating to death of a man by the police in Alexandria a week ago. Plain-clothed men bundled away protestors, punching some of them, before putting them in police vans. A group of around 70 protestors were surrounded on all sides by rows of riot police and prevented from leaving the cordoned-off area for four hours. A small group of protestors had gathered in Cairo's Lazoughly Square — the location of a state security investigations headquarters — after being prevented from assembling outside the nearby interior ministry, where the demonstration was originally planned to take place. Holding up images of Khaled Saeid — who eyewitnesses say was beaten to death by two policemen in Alexandria on Sunday June 6 — around 150 protestors circled the square and chanted slogans against interior minister Habib El-Adly. They were subsequently joined by other protestors who converged on the protest, after which security bodies formed a tight security cordon from which protestors were not allowed to leave. Eyewitnesses say that protestors standing outside this cordoned-off area were harassed, beaten and arrested. Sherif Azer, from the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights (EOHR) who observed the protest, told Daily News Egypt that he witnessed 15 people being arrested. “As soon as people outside the cordoned-off area started chanting they were arrested,” Azer said. Several eyewitnesses told Daily News Egypt that police officers used violence against protestors. Wael Eskandar told Daily News Egypt, “I heard women screaming and then saw someone being carried off by about four or five plain-clothed policemen. Immediately after that they took another man, dragging him along the ground by his arms. “Another group of six or seven men carried off another man. Three or four of them were punching what seemed to be his head while they were dragging him to the police car,” Eskandar said. Another eyewitness, Yasmin El-Rifae, said that she saw “one guy get hit in the face by a plain-clothed man. For the rest of the time there was a back and forth of police officers trying to get people away from the protest.” Inside the cordoned-off area there were sporadic, minor clashes between protestors and security bodies as the latter picked off and detained individual demonstrators. At one point security bodies tightened the cordon significantly for around three minutes, crushing protestors who began screaming as they were carried off their feet and it became difficult to breathe. It was at this point that protestors inside the cordoned-off area were bundled away into police vans nearby. Both Azer and El-Rifae describe hearing banging coming from inside a large police truck in which they think protestors had been detained. The Front to Defend Egyptian Protestors said in a statement that a total of 36 people are known to have been detained. While it is thought that all were subsequently released, this could not be confirmed definitely by press time. The interior ministry has responded to the media outcry about Saeid's death by alleging that he died after swallowing a packet of drugs. The medical report obtained by the Nadeem Center for the Rehabilitation of the Victims of Violence says that Saeid died as a result of asphyxiation from a plastic wrap found in his throat. The report goes on to say that “all the small bruises and abrasions [on Saeid's body] were insignificant in his death” and “that there were no fractures to his skull or any bones.” Saeid's family have responded to interior ministry claims via a statement published on a Facebook group dedicated to Saeid. The statement denies that Saeid was evading military service saying that he had in fact completed it. It goes on to question how the interior ministry concluded that Saeid's death was caused by asphyxiation when “it is customary law [sic] that the forensic report regarding any crime is delivered to the Attorney General in a sealed envelope, not seen by the police.” The statement concludes by saying that the interior ministry statement published earlier this week “ignored” the testimony of prosecution witnesses who describe seeing Saeid being beaten to death. Images of Saeid's badly deformed face, reportedly taken in a morgue, have shocked the Egyptian public who have become inured to frequent media reports of police abuse. Sunday's protest was the first that Eskandar has attended. He told Daily News Egypt that he went because “the lies are extremely obvious.” “[The police] are sending us a message: any one of us could be taken and beaten and killed,” Eskandar said, adding that the crackdown on demonstrators protesting Saeid's death outside the Sidi Gaber police station on Thursday evening demonstrates that, “they're telling us ‘not only do you have to accept that we can kill someone, you have no right to object'.” Eskandar added that he does not think that Sunday's protest was political in nature. “We're simply talking about the right of people to live without being killed by the police,” he said.
