Burning Questions for Mubarak’s Secret Police

6 March 2011

By Emad Mekay

The much-feared secret police and intelligence service that protected the regime of former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak by arresting, torturing, and even killing opponents has started a wave of burning documents and evidence that could incriminate them, as calls escalate for abolishing the force altogether and bringing its officers to justice.

Hundreds of protesters surrounded the main office Saturday of Amn Al- Dawla, the State Security Police, in 6th of October City, 30 kilometres south of Cairo, to try to stop the burning of files believed to contain incriminating evidence of human rights abuses. 

Protesters were shouting "Justice, Justice for they fired bullets on us". Army tanks and armoured vehicles were cordoning off the offices to protect the besieged secret police officers. 

Heaps of documents and files were on fire. Dozens of protesters used wooden ladders to take a peek from above a three-metre high fence. Some managed to salvage lightly burned files. The documents could provide insights on how the secret police operated with complete impunity under Mubarak for 30 years. 

Similar protests broke out in the Mediterranean city of Alexandria and in Sharkia, a province northeast of Cairo. Protesters asked for disbanding the force after word spread on Friday night that officers were shredding documents and setting fire to "top secret’ documents. 

Eyewitnesses in Alexandria told local TV stations that officers cornered inside the building opened fire on the protesters, injuring at least three. 

Disbanding the force would be the next most important landmark in the process of the Egyptian revolution, after it succeeded in ousting the Western- backed Mubarak on Feb. 11, and the dissolution of parliament a few days later. 

Amn Al-Dawla resembles the Iranian Savak force under the Shah of Iran in the 1970s. That force was later eliminated by the Islamic revolution. 

The draconian force had instilled fear among most Egyptians and was often the main friction point between the public and the Mubarak regime. Thousands have been kidnapped and tortured by Amn Al-Dawla officers. 

The force, whose exact number and budget remain a secret, controlled almost all aspects of life in the nation of 85 million. Its reports are said to have shaped the future of most professionals in the country. 

No government appointments were made without approval of the secret police. Political activists risked at the least a ban on travel overseas. Young army officers were put under surveillance to ensure loyalty to Mubarak. Spies were planted everywhere, including in shopping malls and sports clubs to monitor public sentiment. 

"They banned all of us men over 60 years old from gathering inside mosques after prayers to read the Quran," says Haj Mohammed Ali. "They banned any gathering. They wanted to control the people with an iron fist." 

Others tell more dramatic stories. Sayed Al-Gazzar, a secondary school teacher, recounted how his brother Khaled was detained by Amn Dawla in Sharkia for three days for not carrying an ID card. 

"He came out a sick person with lots of mental problems because of the heavy torture he endured," Al-Gazzar told IPS. "We spent a year going from one doctor to the other to find a cure for him. But he died a year later leaving behind three children and a wife without any income. They killed him." 

It is such heart-wrenching stories that started off a campaign in Egypt to disband and investigate the force after the toppling of Mubarak. 

Calls are mounting on Facebook and Twitter to surround more offices of the secret police force to save the important documents. 

"The coalition of the Jan. 25 revolution" (Jan. 25 is when the first big protest was held), a loosely formed grouping of young leaders of the uprising, threatened to launch sit-ins around the country if the army doesn’t order the end of the Amn Dawla, or moves to preserve evidence of its human rights abuses. 

"Our unequivocal request is the elimination of that police force," the group said in a statement sent to IPS. "We will continue to escalate pressure within hours…including issuing calls for masses of Egyptians to demonstrate until that police force is abolished." 

But the spread of protests to other offices of Amn Dawla could lead to renewed violence as the force is well armed, and its members didn’t hesitate in the past to shoot at demonstrations. 

New Prime Minister Essam Sharaf is more responsive to disbanding the force, probing abuses by the force and holding its officers accountable. Sharaf has made statements against the force before. 

Interior Minister Mahmoud Wagdy, an old guard figure, has resisted calls to dissolve the powerful force, preferring instead to "restructure" it. 

Human rights groups and revolution activists have vowed to press ahead with their demands to remove all symbols of the former regime. 

On Thursday, the Cairo-based Arab Network for Human Rights Information published a series of leaked documents that detail the "crimes" of the secret police. In a statement, the group entitled the release: ‘Countdown to End Amn Dawla’.

Mubarak men now target journalist on Egypt crisis beat

3rd February 2011
Emnnews

Sent as reporters to document the turmoil in Egypt, journalists on Wednesday became targets — beaten, bloodied, harassed and detained by raging men, most all in some way aligned with embattled President Hosni Mubarak.

Numerous news outlets — including the BBC, ABC News and CNN — reported members of their staffs had been attacked, most on the streets of Cairo. In several cases, news personnel were accused of being “foreign spies,” seized and whisked away, and often assaulted.

“It was pandemonium. There was no control. Suddenly a man would come up to you and punch you in the face,” said CNN’s Anderson Cooper, describing being attacked by pro-Mubarak demonstrators with two colleagues outside of Tahir Square.

The Dubai-based Al-Arabiya news network was among the worst hit, its office damaged and several of its staff targeted. Among them was correspondent Ahmed Abdullah, who his editor confirmed Wednesday was found bloodied and transported to a hospital after being severely beaten by his captors.

Maurice Sarfatti told the Brussels-based Le Soir newspaper, which he writes for along with publications in Switzerland and France, that he “received a steam of blows to the face” from men claiming he backed leading opposition figure Mohamed ElBaradei.

“I am being guarded by two soldiers with Kalashnikovs (rifles) and bayonets,” said Sarfatti, according to a translation from Le Soir. “They say I will be taken before the intelligence services. They say I am a spy.”

The Committee to Protect Journalists, a New York-based advocacy organization, claimed that such accounts were all too commonplace around Cairo. In a news release, the group detailed about a dozen incidents, accusing men — most of them described as pro-Mubarak demonstrators, “plainclothes police,” uniformed officers and military — of perpetrating attacks on reporters toting cameras and notepads.

The group laid the blame for this violence squarely on President Mubarak’s administration, accusing it of scheming to suppress and stifle news coverage.

“The Egyptian strategy is employing a strategy of eliminating witnesses to their actions,” said Mohamed Abdel Dayem, the committee’s Middle East and North Africa program coordinator. “The government has resorted to blanket censorship, intimidation and, today, a series of deliberate attacks on journalists carried out by pro-government mobs.”

One of those was CNN’s Hala Gorani, who got caught Wednesday morning in a stampede of demonstrators, some of whom were riding on camels and horses.

“I got slammed against the gates and was threatened by one of the pro-Mubarak protesters who was … telling me to ‘get out, get out!” Gorani said. “The pro-Mubaraks, whoever they are, whoever sent them, are being threatening toward camera crews, journalists, anybody who looks like they may be onlookers.”

Hours later, as he walked past raucous Mubarak backers toward the Tahir Square, the hub of Wednesday’s confrontations, Cooper said one man suddenly came out and tried to grab his cameraman’s camera, screaming at them and pushing.

That triggered what the CNN host called a “mob,” which swarmed around Cooper and his two colleagues. They turned to head back, doing so only after getting hit repeatedly by fists and bottles, with some men trying to rip clothing off a female CNN producer. Egyptian soldiers positioned nearby, he claimed, saw the chaos unfold but did nothing.

“There were certain individuals in that crowd itching for a fight,” Cooper said, noting that his cameraman had a bloody eye but otherwise they suffered minimal injuries. “We certainly saw that very up close… It can get nasty very, very quickly.”

Other journalists who were attacked fared worse.

Sarfatti, who also goes by the pen-name Serge Dumont, was taken to a military barracks outside Cairo and given a glass of water from the Nile River and told by his captors that they wanted him to drink it and get diarrhea, according a translation of his remarks to Le Soir.

The Egyptian independent daily Al-Sharouk reported that one of its reporters and photographers were injured after “plainclothes police” attacked its headquarters, according to the Committee to Protect Journalist.

The group said that Danish correspondent Steffen Jensen was beaten by Mubarak supporters with clubs, while he was live on Danish TV2. He later said that, after the men asked for his phone and passport, he was being held by soldiers in Tahrir Square.

In a prepared statement, Jean-Francois Juillard, secretary-general of the advocacy group Reporters Without Borders said “the use of violence against media personnel is especially shocking.”

“These attacks seem to have been acts of revenge against the international media for relaying the protests calling for President Mubarak’s resigning,” Juillard said. “We urge the international community to react strongly to these excesses. And we remind the Egyptian government that it has a duty to apply the law and to urgently restore security for everyone, including media personnel.”