Family says Egyptian police beat their son to death; rights groups demand investigation

Family says Egypt police brutally killed their son

CAIRO — Egyptian police beat a young businessman to death on an Alexandria street after he posted a video on the Internet of officers sharing the spoils from a drug bust among themselves, his family said Friday.

The beating earlier this week — which police deny took place despite photos showing the man’s face had been shattered — has become a rallying cry for Egypt’s political opposition. Activists say it is an example of rampant abuses made possible by a three-decade-old emergency law they describe as a central tool of repression by President Hosni Mubarak’s regime.

Images of 28-year-old Khaled Said’s broken body were posted on social networking websites, where activists dubbed him the “martyr of the emergency law.”

Amnesty International and other rights groups on Friday demanded an independent investigation.

A police official said the cause of Khaled Said’s death on Sunday is unknown and is being investigated. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

Amnesty said police initially told Said’s family he swallowed a bag of narcotics when police officers approached him and that he died of an overdose. Results from an autopsy are due Saturday.

“This was revenge” for exposing the policemen in an Internet video, said the man’s brother, Ahmed Said, in a telephone interview from Alexandria.

He and other relatives as well as the family’s lawyer say witnesses told them two plainclothes officers confronted Said in an Internet cafe Sunday and began arguing with him.

The officers slammed his head against a table, dragged him outside, smashed his head against a metal door and continued to beat him even after he was dead, his brother said.

An uncle, Ali el-Guindi, said a police van later dumped Said’s body outside his house.

Police torture — including sexual abuse — is routine in Egypt, human rights groups say, while the government denies it is systematic. Reformers say the emergency law, in place since 1981, is to blame. Cases of police brutality rarely result in punishment.

The man’s brother, Ahmed, said he saw his body a day after his death. His jaw was twisted, his rib cage mangled and his skull cracked, he said. Similar images were posted on bloggers’ websites and he confirmed their authenticity.

The “shocking pictures … are a rare, firsthand glimpse of the routine use of brutal force by the Egyptian security forces, who expect to operate in a climate of impunity, with no questions asked,” Amnesty International said in a statement.

The group said Egypt must “rein in” their security forces and called for a robust and immediate investigation.

Aida Seif al-Dawla, the head of an Egyptian human rights group dealing with torture victims, said it is no longer enough to ask for an investigation.

“We live in a country where there is absolutely no law,” she said. “We want the sacking and trial of the head of the police.”

Mohamed ElBaradei, a leading government critic and Nobel Peace Prize winner, wrote on his Facebook and Twitter pages that “Khaled’s life must not be lost in vain.”