Imbaba police abuse victim identified

Posted on By 3arabawy

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.

Al-Masry Al-Youm Report

Ghazl Shebeen el-Kom Textile workers on strike

Posted on By 3arabawy

Work came to complete halt at Ghazl Shebeen el-Kom Textile Factory since yesterday 3pm, with around 3,000 workers staging a sit-in protesting their state management’s unfulfilled promises as the company goes into private ownership tomorrow.

I called one of the engineers currently on strike, and he told me the following:
-The work force of the factory is around 4,000 workers. None has broken the strike.
-The government owned company was sold to a multinational called Andurama three months ago, after a rotten evaluation of its assets, and the management hand over should officially happen tomorrow.
-The workers were promised 140-day bonuses (for fulfilling the production plan from July 2006 to 31 January 2007) to be paid as the deal is sealed, but when the morning shift workers went to receive their pay at 3pm, they were shocked to find that only a 45-day loan (not bonus) was awaiting them. They refused to receive the pay, and staged a sit in, as the afternoon shift workers were coming in. The latter, when informed of what happened, joined the sit in and refused to work, demanding to meet any government official to get an explanation for the unfulfilled promises. The company should have sent out buses to pick up the night shift workers, but it didn’t. So the night shift workers came on their expense to the factory to join their colleagues’ strike.
-From a total of 4,000 workforce, there are between 2,500 to 3,000 who are actively present on the factory floor and taking part in the open-ended occupation.
-The workers were promised 12% shares of the factory on privatization. Up till this moment, no official explained to the workers the details of the agreement.
-And just like the case of Ghazl el-Mahalla strike, the Factory Union Committee is standing against the strike, I was told by the engineer I spoke to who also charged that the union members received their full bonuses, and told the workers “go away, we received our bonuses. There’s nothing we can do for you.”

A report in Arabic is available on Kefaya’s website.

Ghazl Shebeen textile workers stage sit-in

Posted on By 3arabawy

Still trying to confirm this, but I received news that textile workers at Ghazl Shebeen factory in the Nile Delta town of Menoufiya started a sit-in last night.

I don’t have more details at the moment about the number of strikers, their demands, etc. I’ll update the posting later when I receive more details.

UPDATE: Today’s Al-Masry Al-Youm ran an interview with Hussein Megawer, the sec-gen of the Egyptian Federation of Trade Unions, where he lashed out against “saboteurs in Ghazl el-Mahalla Textile factory, who infiltrated the workers’ ranks, and who stand behind the campaign to impeach the Factory Union Committee.”