From the Daily News Egypt:
The recent death of a pregnant woman allegedly at the hands of a police officer in the town of Samalut has again brought to the fore the transgressions of officers from the police force in Egypt.
And while the transgression is just one in a long line of reported cases, what was more of a rarity was the reaction the incident propelled: more than a hundred people attacked policemen with rocks and sticks in retaliation.
That change in the dynamic between the police force and the general public is attributable to a fear of what citizen unrest might result in, according to former police officer Omar Afifi.
“Don’t underestimate us. The security apparatus is terrified of the youth of Egypt right now,” he said.
“You ask how can we affect change when the police are everywhere, activists and journalists are in prison, and [the regime] has a stranglehold on the country as if you’re afraid [but the truth is] they’re afraid.
“We’re making them afraid, not the other way round. Look at the Shura Council fire [last August]; that is the police. This failure [to put out the fire] extends to all other departments of the security apparatus,” he added.
Afifi, a police officer for 20 years, authored a book which was swiftly pulled as soon as it hit the bookstores, titled “Alashan Matederebsh Ala Affak” (So You Don’t Get Slapped on the Nape of the Neck). In Egypt, being hit on the nape of the neck signifies dishonor and having the wool pulled over your eyes.
“If we abide by the law and constitution in Egypt, many things will change.”
The book reads like a treatise on the law governing the interaction between the police and the people, and is written in the same question and answer format used in police interrogations. Afifi wrote it to raise public awareness about citizen rights when dealing with the police; and what the police can legally do and not do, laws that the police flaunt according to the former officer.
“The policeman should serve his people, not what we see now where they stomp on people’s necks. It has turned into a tool of oppression. We imagine the police to be this ogre that is controlling people, but they depend on peoples’ ignorance of the law to do what they want,” he said.
Afifi, who fled to the United States in the aftermath of the furor surrounding the book (it was the only country he had a visa for), managed to talk via videoconference at the Heliopolis chapter of the Democratic Front party last month.
He stated that he fled due to fear of what might happen to him had he been arrested, and duly highlighted several different methods of torture carried out here.
Amongst the methods of torture used in Egyptian police stations, according to Afifi, is electrical shocks, urination in the mouth and covering prisoners in sugar and leaving them for the ants.
In related news, the Torture in Egypt blog is reporting that a police informer kidnapped and sexually abused three children in Wadi el-Natron as a favor for a friend! The informer also fabricated charges against the kids, keeping them in custody for 38 days.