By Sarah Carr
ALEXANDRIA: The Alexandria Criminal Court heard witness testimony on Saturday as the trial of two policemen charged with beating Khaled Saeid to death continued.
The trial was adjourned until Nov. 27 when questioning of witnesses will resume.
A heavy security cordon of riot police and plain-clothed state security investigations officers surrounded the courthouse. As in the previous trial session last month, journalists who arrived after 9 am were prevented from entering the courthouse, being informed that they required special permission from the judge in order to do so.
At least one journalist, from independent daily El-Youm El-Sabei, was able to enter the courthouse by arriving early. Sally Sami, a trial observer for rights organization Amnesty International, succeeded in entering the courthouse by going in with Saeid’s relatives.
The ban imposed by security officers was in conflict with statements made by presiding judge Moussa El-Nahrawy during the court session; according to Sami, El-Nahrawy said that the trial session is “public and open to all.”
Five defense witnesses and four prosecution witnesses were heard during the trial, Sami told Daily News Egypt, adding that the judge ordered that witnesses wait outside the courtroom while others gave evidence.
A forensics expert, Mina Samir, described the tests he carried out on Saeid’s urine, telling the court that he found evidence of cannabis and a pharmaceutical drug, Taramadol.
The forensics expert also described the drug wrap that the interior ministry says caused Saeid’s death by asphyxiation, saying that it contained cannabis and had a “sticky residue.” The expert told the court that he did not test the sticky residue in order to discover what it was.
Another defense witness, Ahmed Radwan, claimed to be a friend of Saeid. According to Sami, Radwan was grilled intensely by the judge about his relationship with Saeid.
El-Youm El-Sabei reported that Radwan told the court that he is a part-time goalkeeper who occasionally smoked Cannabis with Saeid.
Radwan said that he was with Saeid at the internet café in Cleopatra, Alexandria, when defendants Awad Ismail Suleiman and Mahmoud Salah Mahmoud entered. Radwan claimed that the policemen used saltwater in an attempt to make Saeid vomit the drug wrap he had swallowed.
Sami told Daily News Egypt that according to Saeid’s relatives Radwan was not a friend of Khaled Saeid’s.
Prosecution witness Haitham Hassan Hanafy told the court that he saw the defendants beating Saeid brutally in the building next to the cyber café Saeid was in when the policemen apprehended him.
This version of events was supported in testimony given to the court by Mohamed Naeem Fares, the doorman of the building — and his wife Amal Kamel — in which witnesses say Saeid was beaten to death by Awad and Suleiman.
Sami said that court proceedings were “fair.” She added that judge El-Nahrawy removed two people from the courtroom for not respecting court rules and ordered that two others be placed behind bars with the defendants for noise disturbance.
Meanwhile outside, a group calling itself the Popular Movement for the Disclosure of the Truth again staged a demonstration on the courthouse steps.
Unlike lawyers and other individuals attempting to enter the building, the group’s members were admitted to it and allowed to assemble unchallenged by police officers.
The mostly young men who took part in the demonstration wore matching t-shirts and chanted against Saeid, National Association for Change leader Mohamed ElBaradei and other opposition activists who they described as “foreign agents” and “Jews.”
State-backed newspapers responded to the outrage caused by post-mortem images of Saeid’s badly disfigured skull posted online by painting 28-year-old Saeid as a drug addict who evaded doing army service, accusations assiduously denied by his family.
While state newspapers such as Al-Gomhuria uphold the interior ministry’s version of events — that he choked on a drug wrap he swallowed when he was approached by the two defendants — Saeid’s family and witnesses to his death say that he was in fact beaten to death.
Ibrahim Gamil Ibrahim, who introduced himself as the founder of the Popular Movement for the Disclosure of the Truth, said that its members “are neither with the police nor with Khaled Saeid but with disclosure of the truth.”
“Initially Khaled Saeid was described as a hero on Facebook and the television, but nobody knows the other side. Who is this Khaled Saeid who’s being described as a hero? There are better people than him, such as Marwa El-Sherbini who was killed in Germany,” Ibrahim commented.
Ibrahim questioned why people “are championing” Khaled Saeid’s case “when he was a drug addict with a criminal record.” The movement’s founder described the members of the “We Are All Khaled Saeid” Facebook group — which has over 309,000 members — as “s people with nothing better to do with their time.”
Acknowledging that the police are frequently accused of brutality, Ibrahim said, “There isn’t a single ministry which doesn’t commit excesses. Let’s say that we get rid of the excesses by abolishing the interior ministry. What will happen then? Thuggery. There would be no security in the country.”
The Nadeem Center for the Rehabilitation of the Victims of Violence reported that at least seven pro-Khaled Saeid demonstrators were arrested on Saturday, with unconfirmed reports that 20 people are still missing.
One witness, Noha Tareq, told Daily News Egypt that she saw demonstrators being manhandled and arrested outside the courthouse early on Saturday morning.
Pictures posted on the “We Are All Khaled Saeid” Facebook group show the badly bruised face of Mohamed Tareq of the Alexandria University’s faculty of commerce, who was allegedly arrested and physically assaulted by police officers on Saturday before being dumped barefoot on a highway.
