Category: Blog

Off-duty officer detained for shooting man

Posted on By 3arabawy

From the Daily News Egypt:

Police officer Adel Al-Shahed of the Giza police station is being held pending investigation for fatally shooting a man while off-duty.
Al-Shahed was involved in an altercation near the Shooting Club in Mohandiseen last Friday, where shots fired from his gun resulted in the death of one man and the injury of another.
One man died as a result of two gunshot wounds and another, Bassem El Shewaify, was injured after being shot in the leg.
Details of what happened exactly remain unclear, but in an interview on Mehwar satellite channel’s “90 Minutes” talk show, the victim’s brother said the fight began when the policeman’s brother got into a fight with the victim’s brother.
When the policeman got involved on his brother’s behalf, he took out his gun and fired shots in the air. A chase ensued until the man fell to his death at the entrance to an underground parking lot on Nargis Street right off Thawra Street.
“I heard the gunshots and saw a large group of people down that road [Nargis Street]. Bassem El-Shewaify was shouting for people to get him an ambulance saying he had been shot in the leg. They were also holding the policeman down in an empty building across the road,” eyewitness Mostapha El Tayeb told Daily News Egypt.
There are contradictory statements over how the shots were fired, with the policeman claiming it was an accident and that he only fired in the air while others claim he fired directly at the man.
Porters, residents and builders on Nargis Street were reluctant to speak about the crime. Many claimed they were not there at the time and alleged that they had not seen anything.
The guard of the underground garage on whose entrance the man died said “I did not see or hear a thing.”
The Ministry of Interior sent a letter to the authorities investigating the case briefing them that the policeman was off-duty when this happened, and therefore had no legal justification to use his gun.
The ministry added that when a policeman is off-duty, he is considered a regular citizen and should be treated as such.

In other news, a security source told El-Badeel that the Interior Ministry is NOT going to hold any internal investigation into any of the recent incidents of police killings and will leave that matter to the state prosecutor.

The Lost Revolution

Posted on By 3arabawy

Chris Harman, The Lost Revolution, p.82

An uprising can only succeed if the masses feel they have chance of success. They are not drilled military formations, trained to maintain their ranks in retreat as in advance. They are men and women who will give their all if they are going to achieve liberation, but who will quickly disperse and drift back to their normal humdrum lives in the factory, the tenement, the pub, if they feel that that objective has been abandoned. A revolutionary movement that is sure of victory will forget everything else. But the moment leaders acknowledge that the old order is to continue […] the rank and file will begin to worry about their jobs, their homes, the attitude of the foremen and the local policeman.

Mahalla workers demand reversal of peer transfers

Posted on By 3arabawy

Sarah Carr reports…

Five workers involved in labor activity in Ghazl El-Mahalla spinning factory were subjected to unofficial disciplinary measures by the company’s management, one of them told Daily News Egypt.
The measures follow a protest held on Oct. 31 during which some 800 workers protested alleged plans to privatize and sell off the factory and called for the resignation of Fouad Hassan, the company’s executive manager.
Wedad El-Demerdash said that she and four other factory employees were transferred from their posts and put under investigation as a direct result of their participation in the October protest.
“Amal Said and I have been working in the production unit for 25 years. On Nov. 1 we were prevented from entering the factory and attacked by individuals as we tried to go in,” El-Demerdash said.
“Amal was beaten and her clothes were ripped during this attack. We’ve filed complaints both with the police and within the company,” she continued.
El-Demerdash and Said were verbally informed that they had been transferred to the company’s Mahalla and Kafr El-Hegaz nurseries respectively.
El-Demerdash says that on the same day Karim El-Beheiry, an administrative employee and Muhammad El-Attar, a worker on the shop floor, were also prevented from entering the factory.
“Muhammad has been transferred to the company’s Alexandria branch and Karim to its Cairo office. None of them received official, written notification of their transfer,” El-Demerdash said.
El-Beheiry says on his blog Egyworkers that he now has to commute daily from Mahalla to work in Cairo, a round trip of at least four hours.
He was one of three Ghazl El-Mahalla workers arrested and detained for two months earlier this year following the events of April 6, when security forces in the Delta town violently put down demonstrations against rising food prices.
The latest factory worker to be transferred is Wael Habib who was prevented from entering the factory on Wednesday Nov. 26 and, according to the labor activism blog Mahalla Horizons (afaqm.wordpress.com) was informed by telephone that he had been transferred to the company’s Cairo office.
Mahalla Horizons says that Habib had been involved in distributing leaflets among workers.
The leaflets called for the revocation of the transfer orders issued against El-Demerdash, Said, El-Beheiry and El-Attar, the dismissal of Fouad Hassan and an investigation into the LE 144 million losses incurred by the company which workers attribute to Hassan, the operation of machines lying idle and finally the new investments being pumped into the company.
“One hundred and eighty workers in addition to this group of five are under investigation in the factory,” El-Demerdash said.
“Hassan holds daily meetings with workers, and in between these meetings and the investigations we can’t get on with our work. He is deliberately trying to make the factory lose money because they want to privatize it,” she continued.
Hassan could not be reached at time of press.
Activists have announced a demonstration in solidarity with the five Mahalla workers on Monday at 6 pm outside the Journalists’ Syndicate, Cairo.