By Sarah Carr
CAIRO: A preliminary report of the second autopsy performed on the body of alleged victim of police beating Khaled Saeid has upheld the findings of the original autopsy.
Yasser El-Refai, head of the Alexandria appeals public prosecution office said during a press conference Wednesday that the autopsy performed by a three-man specialist forensic committee found that Saeid died as a result of asphyxia caused by a plastic wrap containing hashish blocking his windpipe.
The preliminary report also says that an opiate analgesic, Tramadol, was also detected in Saeid’s blood.
Saeid was arrested in an Alexandrian internet café on June 6 by two police officers, who eyewitnesses say brutally assaulted him in the entrance of a neighboring building.
Graphic images of his badly deformed face, taken in a morgue, subsequently appeared online.
According to El-Refai, the images were taken after the autopsy, rather than before, “as is clearly evident from the autopsy stitches visible in the dead man’s face and neck”.
The Interior Ministry alleged that Saeid has a criminal record of drug offences and that he died after swallowing a drug wrap, a version of events which Saeid’s family and acquaintances rejected but which the first forensic medical report upheld.
Protests erupted in Cairo and Alexandria calling for the resignation of Interior Minister Habib El-Adly and the prosecution of the two policemen, Mahmoud Saleh Mahmoud and Awad Ismail Suleiman, who allegedly attacked Saied.
The attorney general approved the request to exhume Saeid’s body and perform a fresh autopsy last week.
The preliminary report states that injuries on Saeid’s body were caused by “contact with a solid object or objects” and that they may have been caused “by force used during the attempt to overpower the victim”.
“These are light injuries and did not cause his death,” the report continued.
According to El-Refai the final report will be issued after the Alexandria appeals prosecution office receives the preliminary report in order to call in Mahmoud and Suleiman for questioning and consult with Saeid’s family on the findings of the report.
As news of the preliminary report’s findings reached Egypt’s online community, angry Facebook and Twitter users called for more protests directed at both the interior ministry and the forensic doctors who performed the autopsy.
