The Alexandria Misdemeanour Court decided to renew the detention of two low-ranking police officers, who were accused of assaulting a doctor named Mohamed Tarek at Al-Amiry hospital in Alexandria for 15 days, according to a statement from Doctors Syndicate Secretary General Mona Mina.
Three days ago, the prosecution decided to jail the police officers for four days pending investigations after receiving the hospital report on the case. It further accused the officers of assaulting a doctor during his work.
The two officers went to the hospital with their mother and demanded immediate hospital treatment. When their mother was not seen as soon as they wished, one of the officers fought with an emergency room doctor and pointed his gun in her face, so Tarek interfered to help her.
In her statement, Mina praised the doctors’ mass general mid-February following an attack on two doctors at Al-Matariya hospital. The assembly demanded several changes, including the referral of Minister of Health Ahmed Emad El-Din to a disciplinary committee, his dismissal from the cabinet, and to stand up against police brutality.
The assault against the Alexandrian doctors is not the first of its kind. Police brutality against prisoners, citizens, doctors, and public figures increased dramatically in the last two months of 2015 and the first two months of 2016 have also seem numerous cases of police brutality.
Over the course of several press conferences and statements, the Ministry of Interior has insisted these attacks and similar behaviour by police officers are individual cases that do not represent the security apparatus as a whole.
On 1 March, Prime Minister Sherif Ismail condemned the general assembly movement in a televised interview on state TV and said the Doctors Syndicate should not have escalated their protest demands in response to the Al-Matariya incident as the matter should have ended after Al-Matariya doctors reported the case to police.
