The Skeptic الشكاك

1048 ‘Cops and Bloggers’

Journalist and blogger Scarr chases a detained blogger and a journalist from a police station to State Security headquarters, records the telling details that don’t usually make it into articles, and leaves “with renewed respect for the junior lawyers who put in the leg work running from police station to police station after detainees, trying to prevent them disappearing into the system.”

The lawyer said that the ma2moor “just wanted to get rid of” as many of the people in the police station as possible, because the cage was getting crowded. Ahmed later told us that many of the detainees had been brought in from a local slum area where there had been a fight. What looked like the relatives of these people were sat opposite the police station. Women and children, one of whom was asleep across his mother’s lap. They were camped out under the huge, imposing tower of the Islamic Bank.

Ahmed also said that he had been held with men who had been in the police station “for five days without charge” and that they were beaten on a daily basis and generally kept in deplorable conditions. He said that one of these men lifted up his shirt to show him cigarette burns on his torso, inflicted by the police.

Ahmed was particularly moved by the plight of a female detainee was being held inside the police station with her 2 year-old daughter. The child was hungry, and Ahmed gave a policeman 20 LE to go and get her some food.
[Full Post…]

Whenever I’ve seen the Egyptian criminal system at work, it’s been because of some high-profile case. Every time, I’ve felt the same respect for the lawyers who chase people around police stations and the same unease at passing by the crowds of people who do disappear, all those who never get web banners, press releases, lawyers or trials. So thanks, Scarr, for writing about them too.

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