By Ingy Hassieb and Sarah Carr
CAIRO: El Nadeem Center for the Rehabilitation of the Victims of Violence filed a complaint with the attorney general Saturday, demanding that the intimidation of witnesses in case of Khaled Saeid be stopped, lawyer Mohamed Abdel-Aziz said.
Hatem Kassem, Saeid’s brother and also a lawyer representing the Saeid family, said the authorities are yet to respond to the request.
Although there are no laws for witness protection in Egypt, Abdel-Aziz said that the complaint filed specifies that any harm that should come to witnesses to a crime or family or friends of the victim would be the direct responsibility and fault of the Ministry of Interior.
“We are demanding and pushing for a witness-protection law,” Abdelaziz added that.
Intimidation of witnesses to the death of Saeid allegedly began two weeks ago, starting with the main eyewitnesses, Hassan and Haytham Mesbah, owners of the internet café where Saeid had been apprehended and physically assaulted by two police detectives, Awad Ismail Suleiman and Mahmoud Sabry Mahmoud.
Witnesses say that Saeid was viciously beaten in the entrance of a building next to the internet café and that he died at the scene. Two autopsy reports upheld interior ministry allegations that Saeid died after swallowing a plastic drug wrap of marijuana.
The victim’s friends and family also say they were subject to intimidation by policemen who have allegedly been stationed near the victim’s home and gravesite.
“We asked the attorney general to bring an end to the intimidation,” Abdelaziz told Daily News Egypt. “We also requested that security threats against the deceased’s family be stopped.”
Family members, he said, are being constantly called to the Sidi Gaber Police Station under false accusations to be threatened with detainment and fabricated court cases if they do not drop the charges against the two officers.
Suleiman and Mahmoud were detained last week, pending an investigation of charges of illegal arrest and misuse of force against an individual arrested illegally.
With the trial of policemen Suleiman and Mahmoud set to begin on July 27, 2010 in the Alexandria Criminal Court, internet website “We are all Khaled Said” (www.alshaheeed.co.uk) called for a third protest on Friday, roughly a month after 28-year-old Saeid died when he was apprehended by two policemen in an Alexandrian internet café.
In an apparent attempt to circumvent the draconian laws governing demonstrations in Egypt, participants in the “silent protests” stood in a single file along waterfronts, identifiable only by their black clothing.
Protestors who attempted to gather on Cairo’s Qasr El-Nil Bridge were, however, prevented from doing so by security bodies who stopped people from crossing the bridge at the time protests were scheduled to take place throughout Egypt.
Small groups of protestors were able to assemble briefly in parts of Cairo before congregating at the Journalists’ Syndicate where they protested for roughly an hour.
The “We Are All Khaled Said” website says that protests were held in Alexandria, Assiut, Tanta, Mansoura, Port Said and Damanhour.
Around 100 demonstrators also gathered at London’s Marble Arch to draw attention to the case.
