CAIRO: Deputy Chief Coroner Magda Helal said Thursday evening that 17 of the 19 unidentified bodies believed to have been killed during the revolution were brought into the morgue donning the blue prison uniforms. “Most probably they were inmates at Fayoum prison,” she said in a telephone interview with On TV's Akher Kalam (The Last Word) talk show hosted by Yousry Fouda. The 19 bodies were buried Thursday afternoon when Prime Minister Essam Sharaf authorized the burial a day earlier. “Five of them were known by name but never claimed by anyone,” Helal said. On Jan. 28, dubbed the “Day of Rage,” the violent security crackdown on peaceful pro-democracy protesters led to clashes between the two sides that eventually had the police surrender from the streets leading to a security vacuum. According to official sources, 23,000 prisoners reportedly escaped from prisons and detention centers countrywide. While 16,000 were either re-arrested or returned voluntarily, some 7,000 are still fugitives. Helal said that autopsies were performed on all of them upon orders from the Prosecutor General to identify how they died, but did not mention the cause of death in each case. She added that DNA samples were extracted from the bodies and identification tags were attached to each of them for possible future attempts to identify them. The official Middle East News Agency (MENA) had earlier reported that their ages were between 20 and 25. Director of the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI) Gamal Eid told Daily News Egypt that some of the victims may have been detained by the disbanded state security police. “There are no detailed records of detainees at the interior ministry…Many of these [dead prisoners] may have not been listed [in official documents],” Eid said, holding ex-interior minister Habib El-Adly accountable for their death. “The sacked coroner chief El-Sebaei Ahmed El-Sebaei is also responsible for this situation,” Eid added. El-Sebaei is under investigation for alleged violations he committed during his tenure including accusations of forging evidence. Clashes between protesters and police forces during the revolution left at least 846 dead and 6,467 injured, according to a report issued by an official fact-finding mission earlier in April. About 1,000 citizens have also been reported missing since the revolution erupted. Only one low-ranking policeman was sentenced to death in absentia so far for killing and injuring protesters near a police station in Cairo. El-Adly, a number of his aides and dozens of police officers across Egypt have already been referred to criminal courts for killing and injuring protesters. Ousted president Hosni Mubarak will stand trial before a criminal court on Aug. 3 on charges of premeditated murder of peaceful protesters and the injury of others in addition to other corruption charges. CAIRO: Deputy Chief Coroner Magda Helal said Thursday evening that 17 of the 19 unidentified bodies believed to have been killed during the revolution were brought into the morgue donning the blue prison uniforms. “Most probably they were inmates at Fayoum prison,” she said in a telephone interview with On TV's Akher Kalam (The Last Word) talk show hosted by Yousry Fouda. The 19 bodies were buried Thursday afternoon when Prime Minister Essam Sharaf authorized the burial a day earlier. “Five of them were known by name but never claimed by anyone,” Helal said. On Jan. 28, dubbed the “Day of Rage,” the violent security crackdown on peaceful pro-democracy protesters led to clashes between the two sides that eventually had the police surrender from the streets leading to a security vacuum. According to official sources, 23,000 prisoners reportedly escaped from prisons and detention centers countrywide. While 16,000 were either re-arrested or returned voluntarily, some 7,000 are still fugitives. Helal said that autopsies were performed on all of them upon orders from the Prosecutor General to identify how they died, but did not mention the cause of death in each case. She added that DNA samples were extracted from the bodies and identification tags were attached to each of them for possible future attempts to identify them. The official Middle East News Agency (MENA) had earlier reported that their ages were between 20 and 25. Director of the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI) Gamal Eid told Daily News Egypt that some of the victims may have been detained by the disbanded state security police. “There are no detailed records of detainees at the interior ministry…Many of these [dead prisoners] may have not been listed [in official documents],” Eid said, holding ex-interior minister Habib El-Adly accountable for their death. “The sacked coroner chief El-Sebaei Ahmed El-Sebaei is also responsible for this situation,” Eid added. El-Sebaei is under investigation for alleged violations he committed during his tenure including accusations of forging evidence. Clashes between protesters and police forces during the revolution left at least 846 dead and 6,467 injured, according to a report issued by an official fact-finding mission earlier in April. About 1,000 citizens have also been reported missing since the revolution erupted. Only one low-ranking policeman was sentenced to death in absentia so far for killing and injuring protesters near a police station in Cairo. El-Adly, a number of his aides and dozens of police officers across Egypt have already been referred to criminal courts for killing and injuring protesters. Ousted president Hosni Mubarak will stand trial before a criminal court on Aug. 3 on charges of premeditated murder of peaceful protesters and the injury of others in addition to other corruption charges.
