CAIRO: Over a year since the murder of Khaled Saeid, whose killing at the hands of police informants sparked the January 25 uprising, cases of police brutality are once again surfacing online, this time with the victim and the police officer each telling their side of the story in YouTube videos.
Mohammad Al-Sayed Rizk was shot three times by a police officer in Alexandria.
Even though unlike Saeid, Rizk survived, a lawyer representing Saeid’s family Mahmoud Al Bakry Al-Afify told Daily News Egypt, that we have “returned to square one.”
Rizk ran a small tea stall on the Alexandria corniche, serving drinks to passersby.
On the first day of Eid El-Fitr, Rizk told DNE in a telephone interview, he got into a fight with a man running a nearby tea stall. Even though it ended peacefully, a police officer who saw the incident from afar approached the two to investigate.
According to Al-Afify, when the officer asked who had been fighting, Rizk claimed responsibility, clarifying that the fight was over, to which the officer answered that it was not up to him to decide when to pick fights and end them.
Rizk’s mother told DNE that when the officer cursed him, her son made the “mistake” of answering back. “Don’t curse my parents, yours are no better than mine,” he said.
After being beaten by the officer as passersby watched, Rizk refused to go to the police station, convinced that he had done nothing wrong.
When the beating got worse, his mother explained, Rizk picked up a drinking glass and hurled it at the officer.
“He did it in self-defense,” said his mother.
“When the officer saw blood pouring from his forehead,” the mother recalled, “he immediately picked up his gun and shot my son three times: one in the abdomen, which severed his intestines, another broke his pelvis and the third in his leg.”
Rizk, who recounted his story in a YouTube video, said that despite losing consciousness after the shooting, the officer still wanted to take him to the police station, but the people stopped him as he dragged Rizk towards the police car.
Surrounded by his family Rizk was taken immediately to hospital. When they headed to the police department to file a complaint, they were told the police station has not been processing complaints since the Jan. 25 uprising.
In the meantime, the officer had filed a report against Rizk, accusing him of assault and sexual harassment.
In a counter YouTube video, the accused officer Mohammad Salem, said that he was summoned by citizens complaining that someone was harassing passersby on the corniche.
While he confirmed that the fight was over by the time he arrived, a person at the scene told him that Rizk had wielded a sharp knife during the fight.
Salem said that Rizk took off his shirt and started breaking drinking glasses and throwing some at the officer, as soon as he approached him. He also claims that Rizk cursed him and other police officers, adding that witnesses said that his behavior was generally abnormal.
“I tried holding him down without using force, yet he kept threatening me with a broken glass,” Salem said in the video.
He explained that when Rizk wounded his arm, he fired in the air to scare him but to no avail. Rizk allegedly attacked him again, this time wounding his left eye.
“The bleeding blinded me,” the officer said, “so I shot him in the leg … I wanted him alive and brought to justice.”
When Rizk started running away, Salem shot him again, this time bringing him down.
He said that he asked passersby to call an ambulance “to save his life.”
While Rizk and his lawyer claim that Salem got five stitches in his eye and three in his arm, the officer claims that he received 35 stitches in his eye.
Rizk’s mother said they were surprised to read in the newspapers that Salem “was rewarded for what he had done to my son. They thanked the officer for his bravery with dealing with a thug.”
Rizk says he was handcuffed in hospital. He was also accused of having a criminal record, which, according to Al-Afify was reminiscent of Khaled Saeid’s case.
“My son used to work at the judges club, how can he have a criminal record?” his mother asked.
Al-Afify has filed charges of attempted murder against the officer.
“Now it’s Rizk’s word against the officer’s,” Al-Afify said.
“Rizk only attacked the officer in self-defense and there are eye-witnesses to prove it,” he added.
Rizk has left hospital but is still receiving treatment at home.
