CAIRO - Residents in the Arbaeen district of Suez City heaved a deep sigh of relief after burning down the police station there during the recent nationwide turmoil. They said that they had overcome their long-held fear of brutal police officers and security personnel, describing the police station as “the perfect example of injustice and the abuse of human rights“. Many other police stations across the country have been torched by angry demonstrators on January 28, dubbed as Friday of Anger. During the mayhem, prisons were attacked and their inmates set free. The police station in Arbaeen was attacked by thousands of angry residents, moments after the nation's policemen mysteriously disappeared on January 26, paving the way for widespread looting, vandalism and sabotage. It has been claimed that the police withdrew on orders from ex-Minister of Interior General Habib el-Adly. An investigation ordered a few days ago by President Mubarak will tell us whether this is true or not. According to residents in the coastal city of Suez, their women and girls were sexually harassed, abused and insulted. “Police officers, who used to be here, tortured me till I collapsed when I refused to confess to a theft I hadn't committed,” says one resident, standing on the rubble of the 'late' police station. “I was detained for more than a week without questioning.” The unnamed resident was set free after a wealthy man in the district intervened. “My family went to the businessman and begged for his help,” says the 37-year-old father-of-two, proudly adding that he got his revenge by giving two of his torturers a vicious beating. “My wife and neighbours also attacked them and, for the first time in our lives, we watched as police officers from big families begged us for mercy. We didn't kill them.” A 56-year-old man says that his eldest son, a university student who was arrested for belonging to the Kefaya (Enough) protest movement, suffered in another police station that was razed to the ground. “They burst into our home at dawn and dragged away my boy, handcuffed and blindfolded. They took him to an undisclosed location,” the father recalls. “We spent two weeks touring police stations, the State Security Department and the Parliament, trying to find out where he was, but no-one gave us a reassuring answer.” One day, the family received a call from the missing boy, informing them that he was being detained 'indefinitely' in a heavily guarded prison on the outskirts of Cairo. Under the Emergency Law, in force since 1981, the Minister of Interior is empowered to detain indefinitely anyone, who allegedly constitutes a threat to peace and security. In the past, the Minister of Interior normally used this power to detain political activists and key members of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood. The undergraduate spent three years in jail without trial before being sent home after his family told the security authorities that he had disowned Kefaya and would never have anything to do with politics again. A fully veiled woman describes how security men raided her apartment, in order to arrest her husband, who belongs to a fundamentalist group. “They came at dawn and left no stone unturned in their search for my husband,” she says. “They terrorised my children and refused to let me take my two-year-old daughter with me when they led me away.” When they arrived at the police station, an officer, flanked by three NCOs, made lewd comments and forced her to reveal her husband's whereabouts. Ignoring her tears, they refused to let her go until her husband gave himself up. “They abused and slapped me, then put me in a cell for women that was full of whores, thieves and killers. The next 24 hours were a nightmare until my husband turned himself in. Then they finally let me go home to our frightened children,” she says.
