SS Police General Muhammad Refaat Qomsan—the man who oversaw and helped engineer the rigging of elections under Mubarak and who still keeps his job—is now a reformed man, a revolutionary, and he’s assuring us that the next parliamentary elections won’t be rigged and that the “dead won’t vote.”

Yeah, right.

has described his ministry’s reshuffle as “the biggest” in its history. The reshuffle covers 4,000 police officers according to the minister who stated that the ministry ended the service of 505 major-generals and brigadier-generals and 82 colonels. These include 18 major-generals and 9 brigadier-generals accused of killing protesters.
This minister of interior announced the reshuffle today in a press conference after meeting with Prime Minister Essam Sharaf earlier this morning.
El-Eissawi revealed that 18 police officers accused of killing protesters during the first days of the January 25 uprising were purged from the force. Another 54 police officers accused of killing protesters were reassigned duties that do not require interaction with the public.
During the press conference, El-Eissawi denied rumors that Alaa and Gamal Mubarak had escaped from Tora prison.
He also defended the role of the police in the revolution, claiming that the ministry does not have snipers and that as policemen were already absent from the streets from 28 January they could not have been involved in the shooting of protesters from that date.
The Ministry of Interior is accused of placing snipers on roof tops around Tahrir Square during the uprising to shoot protesters. The ministry denies the allegations.

I will not waste time in responding to the absurd lies of General Essawi re the MOI not having snipers, as Zeinobia has a well written, detailed blog post about the subject that refutes completely such claims.

But let’s go back to the reshuffle move by the MOI. Essawi basically referred to retirement generals who were already about to reach their retirement age in all cases. And most of those officers “forced to retire” will neither be tried nor investigated, which I find completely unacceptable, since the MOI under Mubarak has been the biggest criminal syndicate in this country and those generals are its leaders. Where is justice? Where is the transparency? Why don’t those generals be investigated automatically by the prosecutors publicly to find out about the roles they performed at the ministry. And who are those officers forced to retire? We don’t have all the names.

And more troubling, looking at the list of the senior officers who were kept in the service, I found some familiar names from the Piggipedia:

For example, Khaled Gharaba, the Mahalla torturer, is to head Alexandria’s Security Directorate.

From Piggipedia

General Muhammad Refaat Qomsan has been re-appointed as the Interior Minister’s First Assistant for Administrative Affairs.

From SS Officers

SS General Tarek el-Rakaybi is to replace General Hisham Abu Gheida as the Interior Minister’s First Assistant for Guards and Security Division.

From SS Officers

So what happened to Abu Gheida? I have no idea.

More ludicrously, the Alexandria police murderers including Wael el-Komy, who are undergoing trial for the murder of protesters, have been moved to better paying jobs in other police departments.

This musical chairs game isn’t going to fool the Egyptian people. Protests and sit ins continue and we are expecting a mass turn out in Tahrir today.

Police General Muhammad Refaat Qomsan, is a former State Security Police officer and a close aid to SS General Ahmad Raafat who was in charge of the Islamists’ file at the dissolved apparatus.

Earlier in his career, Qomsan, who hails from the province of Minya, played a central role in the 1990s crackdowns on the Muslim Brothers, including the 1992 “Salsabeel Case” that targeted the Brothers’ financial assets, and later in the arrest of their activists in the professional syndicates. Qomsan also took part in the 1996 crackdown on rockers and metal heads, fabricating charges of “satanism” against them.

More importantly, Qomsan was later promoted by General Habib el-Adly, to become the director of the interior ministry’s “Department of Electoral Affairs”, which supervised the rigging of the elections of the lower and upper houses from 2005 to 2010. Qomsan reportedly has a brother by the name Mostafa, who is a Colonel at the Assiut Security Directorate, where he faces corruption allegations.

After the revolution, you’d expect Qomsan to face justice in a public trial for his crimes. Oh, well, he was rewarded another promotion last March by General Mansour el-Essawi, the “revolutionary” interior minister. Not only did Qomsan get to keep his position as the director of the Department of Electoral Affairs, but he was also given an additional department to lead, the ministry’s Department of Administrative Affairs.

The message the military council and Essam Sharaf’s cabinet are sending is clear: SS torturers and police officials who have been the backbone of the Mubarak’s dictatorship are here to stay.