CAIRO: One hundred and fifty-seven people were detained and appeared before the general prosecution on Sunday, amid continued clashes between the armed forces and protesters on Qasr Al-Ainy St., including nine women of whom seven were hospitalized.
“[The detainees] are held in the South Cairo prosecution, in the Zeinhom Court in Sayeda Zeinab,” said Mohamed Abdel Aziz, lawyer from Al-Nadeem Centre for the Rehabilitation of Torture Victims.
The news was confirmed by lawyers Ragia Omran from the Front to Defend Egyptian Protesters, and Malek Adly from the Hisham Mubarak Law Center, who are representing the detainees.
Among the charges they faced are “the use of force and violence against army officers, by preventing them from performing their duties, through assaulting them with rocks, Molotov cocktails, and firearms.”
“Another charge presented was the vandalism of property intended for public benefit and private property,” Adly said, along with “the deliberate disruption of traffic, vandalism of government property and public facilities with intent to cause fear and chaos.”
The charges also include “arson and the destruction of the Scientific Complex, facades of the People’s Assembly and Cabinet,” in addition to the “injury of a number Armed Forces personnel,” and were filed under administrative complaint No. 7363 for 2011, he said.
Commenting on the events, Adly said that there arrests were mostly random, and have targeted passerby or people going home or to work. Many were in terrible medical condition with horrific wounds and were offered no medical care, he said.
“Another astounding detail is that some were charged with setting fire to the Scientific Complex, even though they were arrested three days ago,” he said, "which makes the whole affair fictional.”
Adly noted that the most common feature among the detainees was that they were mostly of poor or modest background “arrested for just that reason.”
“We don’t know when this series of accusations and fabrications will end, when it’s the army personnel that break and destroy public property, and then arrest civilians and blame them for their actions,” he concluded.
