By Sarah El Sirgany and Ian Lee
CAIRO: A dead body was dropped in downtown Cairo early Sunday morning from what is believed to be a police car, citizens from the neighborhood watch groups told Daily News Egypt.
At 9 am, the body was still on the pavement outside the Mounira Police Station. Residents have covered it with a bed sheet.
The nearby Mounira Hospital initially said it can only take the wounded. A security man standing outside told Daily News Egypt that people should contact the Zeinhom Morgue to pick up the body. A store owner on the opposite side of the police station said he couldn’t get through to anyone.
The store owner said a car from the hospital picked up the body later. Another burnt body was later found in the area, the store owner said. By 12 pm no one had picked it up.
Three men from the neighborhood watch groups standing in a nearby street said they had checked a silver Toyota without plates and found that the driver was a policemen from state security. After they let it pass, they found other citizens from the neighborhood watch groups running telling them to stop the car because it had dropped a dead body earlier.
“The body had a bullet in the abdomen, but no bleeding. This probably means the man was tortured to death and was shot later to cover up the cause of death,” one of the vigilantes protecting the streets against thugs told Daily News Egypt. He didn’t want his name published.
He said he saw cars coming out of the nearby Ministry of Interior and its passengers shooting at the neighborhood watch groups, which was set to protect public and private properties in the absence of police. A man from their group was shot and transferred to hospital covered in blood.
Tahrir Square was filled with hundreds of protesters who seemed to have spent the night there. The army had set up barricades and tanks in the Square, on Qasr Al-Aini Street and the area surrounding the Ministry of Interior. The back streets were mainly policed by the residents. A trickle of people trying to get to work or run errands started filling the streets.
