CAIRO: According to local papers, during the past week crime has been rampant on the streets of Egypt.
Various cases of murder filled the papers this week. Al-Gomhoreya national newspaper reported two murders on Sept. 6, both resulting from financial arguments. One man killed another as a result of a fight over a mobile charge card. In the second murder, a man stabbed a civil servant and her brother over a one-room apartment he had rented from the woman he murdered. The brother is still in the hospital.
In another incident one man killed another with a sword, preventing other people from saving the victim or even calling an ambulance. The motive for the murder was love, as the victim had previously refused the murderer’s proposal to marry his sister.
Al-Mesaa newspaper described the most arguably the most violent murder of the week, which took place in Alexandria. A 17-year-old killed a 6-year-old child in order to rape his dead body and to ensure that the child would not tell anyone. The body was abandoned on a deserted beach and the murderer later returned to the neighborhood to search for the missing child as though nothing out of the ordinary had taken place.
Thefts were also widely reported. Police arrested Eman and Samera, two computer institute graduates, while stealing at the Ramses Hilton Mall; they confessed to eight thefts. They reportedly stole $1,200 and LE 1,900 in one theft and 390 Kuwaiti dinars, $1,900 and LE 700 in another. Several road accidents took place during the last week as well. A bus accident on the Suez road left eight dead and 43 wounded. In another incident, a businessman stopped to view a car accident in Al-Mansoura and collapsed when he discovered that the wrecked car was his son’s. Both incidents were reported in Al-Mesaa newspaper. Al-Masry Al-Youm reported that seven soldiers were either killed or wounded when their car crashed in Al-Behera.
Celebrities also featured in the week s accidents, specifically the husbands of two celebrities. Husbands of singer and actress Mona Abdel-Ghani and actress Ola Rami were taken to the police station. Abdel-Ghani’s ex-husband fought with her while both were buying a newspaper. Rami accused her husband of expelling her from her flat, saying that he slapped her when she went back to get her belongings.
Traditionally, throughout the world policemen run after suspects, but in Shubra, the opposite took place. A few people claimed that they were policemen and stole LE 3,000 from two men. They could not, however, maintain the masquerade for long. People in the district discovered that they were not real policemen and pursued them through the streets of Shubra.
The most remarkable item on the crime pages this week was a man who asked the police to arrest him and brought them a bag full of the drug marijuana . He said in the police reports that he had found the bag while he was working in the garbage dump, but he had had enough of the world and hoped to find peace in prison.
