More than two years after tens of thousands of Egyptians took to the streets on Police Day, to demand the resignation of Hosni Mubarak and an end to impunity for the security forces, activists report that civilians continue to be raped, tortured and killed in police custody.
As one of the protesters who marched that day, Adel Abdel Ghafar, recalled in a post for The Lede last year, anger over routine police brutality was a catalyst from the first day of Egypt’s revolution. “Several groups were mobilizing on this day, including fellow members of the Facebook page We Are All Khaled Said,†Mr. Ghafar wrote. “Khaled Said had been brutally murdered by policemen in Alexandria on June 6, 2010 in broad daylight, and it disgusted me how the Mubarak regime had so blatantly tried to over up his death.â€
On Thursday, Sherief Gaber, a member of Cairo’s Mosireen film collective, drew attention to a harrowing new video report from the group, presenting vivid testimony from minors about the violence they endured and witnessed after they were arrested during recent protests.
Later on Thursday, the Egyptian activist Wael Eskandar posted a link on Twitter to a compilation of graphic, disturbing video clips documenting incidents of police brutality since the election of President Mohamed Morsi last year put the se! curity forces nominally under civilian control. Mr. Morsi, who was in jail on Jan. 25, 2011, is a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist group whose members endured brutal treatment by the police during the Mubarak era.
Last weekend, as the rights activist Hossam Bahgat noted, police officers beat a suspect to death at the funeral of a colleague they accused him of killing.
After listening to Mr. Bahgat describe some of the ongoing abuse documented by the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights in an interview this week on a private television channel, the journalist Rawya Rageh was moved to ask what the point of Egypt’s revolution had been.
