By Mohamed Effat
CAIRO: Amid heavy security presence, some 1,000 protestors and political figures took part in a protest against torture and police brutality in Alexandria on Friday.
The protest began before Friday prayers had ended in the Sidi Gaber Mosque. Devotees began chanting while the Imam was still delivering the sermon.
Once prayers had ended protestors assembled outside the mosque in an area entirely encircled by riot police. Demonstrators chanted against Interior Minister Habib El-Adly and condemned police brutality.
Members of Kefaya Movement for Change, the Karama party, the April 6 Youth Movement, the Ghad party and the National Association for Change took part in the protest.
Some 15 minutes into the protest reform advocate and former head of the IAEA Mohamed ElBaradei left the protest, leading to minor scuffles between the police and protestors when other demonstrators tried to push their way through the security cordon.
Before the prayers ElBaradei, accompanied by members of his family, visited the home of Khaled Saeid, who on June 6, died allegedly at the hands of two policemen who eyewitnesses say brutally beat him.
On Wednesday there was a furious reaction from members of the public to news that a second autopsy performed on Saeid’s exhumed body had upheld the findings of the first autopsy, claiming that he died from asphyxiation after swallowing a plastic wrap containing cannabis.
During the protest lawyer Mohamed Abdel-Aziz told protestors that “12 witnesses have testified to seeing Saeid being assaulted by the policemen.”
A mother of two from El-Sharqeya governorate who attended Friday’s protest told Daily News Egypt that she wanted to participate in earlier protests but had been prevented from doing so because of her daughters’ exams.
She said that she had felt “disgusted and provoked” by the results of the second autopsy report.
The public prosecution office investigation into Saeid’s death is ongoing. On Saturday the two policemen who Saeid’s family allege beat him to death, will give evidence to the public prosecution office. –Additional reporting by Sarah Carr
