CAIRO - Merely alluding to the State Security apparatus was quite sufficient under the regime of former President Mubarak to send shivers down Egyptians' spines. State Security building were generally believed to be places of torture for unfortunate citizens, whether guilty or innocent, who had come under the grip of security officers. Much was also said about the disappearance of falsely accused citizens, including political detainees, into the dungeons of State Security officers. Human rights' organisations repeatedly pinpointed stark legal violations where some of the detainees were even denied a fair trial. The outbreak of the January 25 revolution was partially prompted by deteriorating living conditions. However, many protesters were more significantly concerned with corruption and malpractices, the infamous State Security apparatus being held responsible for a great deal of this. Today, following the downfall of the regime and the shattering of the wall of fear, appalling stories are unfolding. Many citizens who had been done injustice are speaking up to substantiate what was rumoured about the Security Agency being a state within the state. For instance, Sheikh Ali Mukhtar Abdel-Aal was not aware that the sincere advice he gave to Mubarak l9 years ago would cost him l5 years of his life behind bars. The story as Abdel-Aal related to the Arabic-language newspaper Al-Shorouq started when by mere chance he came face to face with Mubarak one day in the Muslim holy month of Ramadan during the time of the dawn prayer in the Prophet's Mosque in Medina, Saudi Arabia. Ali found himself telling Mubarak to be mindful of God and to rule fairly. A few minutes later, the sheikh was grabbed to an unknown security headquarters and later deported to Egypt where he was directly driven to the Lazoughli premises in downtown Cairo of the Ministry of Interior. The only question he was asked there in the presence of ex-Minister of Interior Habib el-Adly, then head of the State Security Investigation Department, why had he said those words to Mubarak. “Following that confrontation, I spent l5 years moving from one prison to another, although there was no court ruling justifying my detention,” the sheikh recounted. He pointed out that during those l5 years several release orders were issued by the Prosecutor General, but they were totally ignored. Owing to the black record of the State Security apparatus, revolutionaries in Al Tahrir Square were steadfast about their demand to have it dissolved. Their will to obliterate an agency that was given a free hand to destroy people's lives and to steer vital sectors the way it wished was not to be compromised. Revolutionaries were further given proof of the soundness of their stand when piles of shredded and burnt documents were found at State Security offices which were reportedly destroyed by the security staff themselves. There is reason to believe that officers, sensing that the wind of reform was blowing in their direction, had to wipe out all traces of whatever evidence was incriminating them. Hair-raising stories are being circulated about the terror and oppression exercised by the security empire in general. In statements to the press from his cell in the notorious Torah Prison, Nabil el-Maghrabi, the oldest political detainee in Egypt, affirmed that he is serving a 53-year cumulative sentence which was supposed to end in 2030 from three , which he says, were fabricated. El-Maghrabi, a former officer in the military intelligence, today 70, was arrested in l979 for opposing the Sadat policies, but by some absurdity his name appeared on the list of those who were accused of assassinating late president Anwar Sadat in l981! He was sentenced to life imprisonment in this case then was tried before a military court in the late l990s on charges of leaking information with the intention of toppling the regime, although he had been behind bars for more than ten years. El-Maghrabi revealed the kind of torture he went through in the Citadel and Wadi el-Natroun prisons. He was locked in the WC for four months where he had to lie face down to breathe fresh air from underneath the door. He remembered the long cold nights, which he and his inmates spent awake shivering, because they were given very light bed covers. As el-Maghrabi put it, torture in Egyptian prisons under the outgoing regime was unbearable and, far more horrifying than that of the US Guantanamo prison camp on Cuba and Abu Gharib prison in Iraq. El-Maghrabi is today hoping that he will be released on the grounds of his health and able to experience the freedom claimed by the January 25 revolution, which he said would not be complete until the State Security Agency is liquidated and the political detainees are set free.
