By Sarah Carr
The death in June of Khaled Saeid might have been just another incident of Egyptian police brutality had it not been for the graphic posthumous photograph of his badly disfigured skull. This image, together with a picture of the smiling 28-year-old man before his death, galvanized public outrage against Saied’s death.
Saeid’s image was also seized upon by police supporters during the trial of two policemen accused of involvement in the young Alexandrian’s death in June; a rowdy group of men held up images outside the courthouse of what they alleged was a mug shot of Saied, who they chanted was a drug addict and army service evader.
The Saeid family’s campaign for justice attracted huge public support, as well as expressions of solidarity from public figures such as former IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei and Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters who displayed Saied’s image during a concert.
Less than five months after Saeid’s death allegations of torture were again leveled against police officers from the same Sidi Gaber police station in Alexandria, this time concerning 19-year-old Ahmed Shaaban, whose body was discovered in a canal in the coastal city.
As in Saied’s case, forensic reports dismissed murder or torture as cause of death. The two policemen in Saeid’s case, however, are being tried for charges of misuse of force by a public official, illegal arrest and torture of an individual arrested illegally.
Meanwhile, freedom of expression took a setback in March of this year when a blogger who described an incident of corruption in an army college on his blog was sent for trial in a military court.
While the charges against Ahmed Mostafa were dropped, in December Facebook user Ahmed Bassiouni was sentenced to six months imprisonment after he created a group on the social networking site providing information about military service.
A rare piece of good news was provided by the release of Kareem Amer in November, the first blogger in Egypt to be imprisoned for charges directly related to his writings. Another blogger, Hany Nazeer was freed after 21 months of administrative detention related to his online writing only to find upon release that he had lost his job with the Ministry of Education.
Human rights groups won three important legal victories this year. In April the Administrative Court suspended a government drugs pricing system which the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR) said violates the right to health.
Labor activists celebrated meanwhile when the Administrative Court ruled that the government is obliged to set a national minimum wage. The government responded by putting in place a wage of LE 400 per month, far below the LE 1,200 for which activists had lobbied.
In November the Administrative Court froze a National Telecommunications Agency decree which imposed restrictions on bulk SMS message sending including the requirement that bulk SMS companies obtain permits costing LE 1 million.
Kareem Amer addresses the press at a press conference following his release in November. (Daily News Egypt Photo/Sarah Carr)
