Imbaba police abuse victim identified

Al-Masry Al-Youm’s investigative journalist Ali Zalat has managed to identify the victim of Imbaba police brutality video, one of the first to be leaked online in April 2006.

According to Thursday’s issue (which I bought an hour ago from a night news stand and should be available online in the morning), the victim is Ihab Magdi Farouk, a 19-year-old worker in a leather factory in El-Mounira El-Gharbeia district of Imbaba, Giza.

Ihab told Al-Masry Al-Youm he was detained by Police Corporals Ahmad Abdel Fattah and Ahmad el-Wardani, in Zaki Mattar Street as the police was breaking up a fight two summers ago. Ihab was then carrying a load of new leather bags. And of course if you look poor and carrying a load of new leather bags, then you cannot be a leather bags distributor (Ihab’s job), you must be a thief! So the two corporals locked him in Imbaba Police Station, till the leather factory owner showed up and explained Ihab had not stolen anything.

Fifteen days later, Ihab bumped into Corporal Ahmad el-Wardani in the street again. The latter just showered him with insults against his mother and family, and then the Corporal pulled out a knife, and dragged Ihab with the help of another police agent into a nearby marble cutting workshop, where they brutally beat him, with kicks and slaps. Then, Corporal Wardani took Ihab to the Imbaba Police Station, where Wardani, his colleague Corporal Abdel Fattah, and other agents kept on sadistically torturing him for two entire days: Ihab was blindfolded, slapped, kicked, whipped with a stick, under the supervision of the corporals and a police officer called Kareem. Before his release, Officer Kareem asked Corporal Abdel Fattah to shower Ihab with slaps, while Kareem was filming them for the fun of it.

Note there is still another leaked abuse video from Imbaba Police Station, and the victim is still unidentified, and the Interior Ministry did not announce any investigation into it yet, though the face of the Corporal is clear in the video.

And only God knows what else happens in that police station that was not caught on camera.

UPDATE: A scan of Al-Masry Al-Youm article.