Around a couple of years before I left the AUC in 2001, the administration had brought this notorious State Security Police General Ashraf Kamal to be in charge of campus security. During my interrogation under torture in Lazoughly in October 2000, the SS officers were repeatedly bragging the “AUC is ours. Our men run it.”
What went on from the moment this General took control has been nothing but the increasing “militarization” of the university security: more guards, more walkie talkies, an increasing gestapo-like attitude in dealing with student activists, more restrictions on political activism, severe intimidation of activists and staff.
AUC professors had spoken to me several times about this guy, expressing their sheer frustration that more or less he has the final say in how things are run in the administration, not the university’s academic staff–which is the same complaint heard from their colleagues in the local universities.
It seems now General Ashraf and his henchmen are busying themselves with the workers on campus.. I was reading this blog, when I came across stories of workers who died during the four-year effort to erect the new AUC campus out in the desert. General Ashraf didn’t have any doubts whom to blame for the deaths.
The tragedies happened because of human error, said Gen. Ashraf Kamal, head of security. “All the deaths occurred through mistakes made by the workers themselves, not by the company,” he said.
And if that isn’t enough:
Campus security was in fact involved in quelling protests, after several hundred workers rallied for the family of one dead worker who was left without compensation, according to Gen. Mohsen Wadie, deputy director for security.