By Sarah Carr
CAIRO: The uncle of Khaled Saeid gave a press conference on Saturday in which he rejected the interior ministry’s allegations against Saeid, who eyewitnesses say was beaten to death by two policemen earlier this month.
Both Ali Qassem and lawyer Mohamed Abdel-Aziz, a member of the legal team representing Saeid’s family say that interior ministry press statements issued shortly after the incident, and which claimed that the 28-year-old was evading military service and had drug convictions are “evidence for the prosecution.”
“The interior ministry presented press statements which it imagined were defense evidence, but are in fact prosecution evidence. They are evidence of fabrication and lies,” Abdel-Aziz told members of the press at a conference held at the Journalists’ Syndicate.
The Ministry of Interior said in the wake of Saeid’s death that he died from asphyxiation after swallowing a drug wrap measuring 2.5 cm by 7.5 cm.
Abdel-Aziz also questioned how the interior ministry came to the conclusion on June 9 that Said died in this way when the autopsy report was issued on
June 12.
Qassem meanwhile criticized the “stupidity of the police”.
“Imagine a wrap measuring 2.5 x 7.5. Would the Green Giant be able to swallow that? How has their stupidity reached these levels?” Qassem said.
During the press conference calls were made for legal action to be taken against the interior ministry for libel against Saeid.
Qassem also told the press conference that his family “know nothing” about a video which appeared online in the days following Saeid’s death and which shows plain-clothed men and police officers in what appears to be a police station discussing a large cache of drugs in front of them.
Rumors spread that Saeid had obtained the video and planned to upload it as evidence of police officers being involved in drug dealing, and that his death was connected to this.
“The interior ministry is responsible for this clip and they can investigate it. We have nothing to do with this clip. We don’t know who filmed it nor who uploaded it,” Qassem said.
Abdel-Aziz said that the results of a second autopsy performed on Saeid’s body when it was exhumed last week would be released in the coming days.
The lawyer said that three members of the police are implicated in Saeid’s death; two undercover low-ranking secret policemen Mahmoud Sabry Mahmoud and Awad Ismail Suleiman — who, it is alleged beat Saeid to death — and officer Ahmed Othman who, Abdelaziz said, gave an order for Saeid’s body to be removed from the crime scene and then returned to it 10 minutes later.
Abdel-Aziz said that “13 prosecution eyewitnesses, not only neighbors of Saeid but people who were present at the crime scene,” volunteered to give evidence twice; the first time during investigations by the Sidi Gaber public prosecution office and the second when the head of the Alexandria appeals public prosecution office went to the crime scene after the attorney general ordered that the inquiry be transferred from Sidi Gaber.
MP Saber Aboul Fotouh called Saeid’s death “a natural outcome of the emergency law” and announced that a campaign has been launched aiming at gathering 100,000 signatures in support of sending the head of Alexandria’s security directorate to trial for police abuses.
After the press conference a protest was held on the steps of the Journalists’ Syndicate condemning police brutality.
