The head of the Egyptian Wrestling Federation, Maj. Gen. Mohamed Mahmoud assured the public on Friday that the Egyptian ambassador and Sports Minister are trying to secure Sayed’s release. Still, he sadly expressed that, unlike Egypt, you could not get someone out of detention in France using connections! The wrestler was eventually released the following day.

Yet, the story had already taken an even more Orwellian turn. The Egyptian Olympic officials declared they’d investigate Sayed, and the Egyptian Olympic Values Committee will look into his case. Who runs this “values committee”? It is Maj. Gen. Sherif el-Komaty, a former State Security Police [SS] officer accused by dissidents of torture, including one infamous case in 2006 when a leftist blogger accused Komaty of raping him in custody.

At the beginning of the 2000s, Komaty (or Qamati) worked for the SS Counter-Communism Bureau (Maktab Mukāfaḥit al-Šīūʿiyya), which is tasked with monitoring and cracking down on leftists and human rights organizations (whose ranks are filled with left-leaning or former communist activists). His pseudonym at the time was “Sherif el-Damati.”

I first spotted Komaty as early as 2003, when he began showing up for pro-Palestine and anti-Iraq war protests in downtown Cairo, in the company of the infamous torturer SS Lt. Colonel Waleed el-Dessouqi, both seen below in the picture I took in a Palestine solidarity protest, 28 September 2003.

Komaty was one of the SS officers involved in the crackdown and trial of Revolutionary Socialist activists in 2003-4. At the time, he held the rank of SS Captain. Over the following years, he ritualistically attended our Kefaya protests in downtown Cairo, monitoring activists with his cold, glassy eyes, together with other infamous SS officers like Ahmad el-Azzazi and Amr Mohsen, seen in the picture below.

During the 2006 “Cairo Spring,” when thousands of Egyptians took to the streets in solidarity with reformist judges, Komaty participated in the crackdown. On 25 May 2006, Komaty, with the help of the police force of Qasr el-Nil Station, kidnapped and brutally tortured left-wing blogger Mohamed el-Sharqawi. Sharqawi accused Komaty of raping him in custody. Komaty was never held accountable despite repeated calls from local and international rights watchdogs.

Komaty continued to attend and monitor leftist protests throughout 2007, where I repeatedly spotted and photographed him.

Then he suddenly disappeared. He could be seen no longer in protests. I don’t know which posts he held in the following years, but at least as of 2008, Komaty was still part of the SS and held the rank of Major, according to one of his relatives’ obituary published in Al-Ahram.

Komaty’s father, Mahdi, worked for the State Radio & TV in Maspero and was a staunch supporter of the Mubarak regime. Following the 2011 revolution, students at the institute where he taught organized protests demanding his removal and accused him of abusive treatment against the students and the employees and occasionally using his son’s SS connections to threaten them.

In recent years, I came across news of Komaty, this time holding the rank of Brigadier General and running the rowing team at the elite Maadi Sports Club. As of 2023, he was (and still is) the vice president of the Egyptian Rowing Federation.

Now, in 2024, Komaty has been promoted to the rank of Major General and entrusted by the regime with overseeing the “values” of the country’s Olympic athletes and will lead an investigation into a sexual assault by one of its top wrestlers.

Sherif el-Qamati is a State Security Police officer who worked at the Bureau of Counter-Communism and Human Rights Organizations, which was in charge of monitoring, arresting and torturing leftists and rights activists.

I first spotted Qamati as early as 2003, when he began showing up for our pro-Palestine and anti-Iraq war protests in downtown Cairo, in the company of the infamous torturer SS Lt. Colonel Waleed el-Dessouqi, both seen below in the picture I took in a pro-intifada protest, 28 September 2003.

Qamati was one the SS officers involved in the crackdown and trial of Revolutionary Socialist activists in 2003-4. He ritualistically attended our protests in downtown Cairo over the following years, monitoring activists with his cold dead eyes which always reminded me of Putin somehow.

During the Cairo Spring, when thousands of Egyptians took to the streets of Cairo in solidarity with reformist judges, Qamati was present in the protests and took part in the crackdown. On 25 May 2006, Qamati, with the help of the police force of Qasr el-Nil Station, kidnapped and sodomized left wing blogger Muhammad el-Sharqawi in custody. He was never held accountable despite repeated calls by local and internaitonal rights watchdogs.

Qamati continued to show up for our protests in 2007, but could hardly be noticed in the following years. Other than demonstrations, I also saw him in January 2007 working out in the FDA Gym at Zamalek’s Yamama Center. As of 2008, Qamati held the rank of Major, according to one of his relatives’ obituary published in Al-Ahram.

So where is this rapist today? Whatever happened to him? Is he part of the National Security Sector? Has he been recycled in some other police department, forced to retire, or what? Qamati must face justice and pay for his crimes.

One of the photos I found on the Nasr City SS DVDs belonged to Brigadier General Ahmad el-Azzazi.

Azzazi was in charge of the “Trade Unions Bureau” in the dissolved State Security Police, which was involved in monitoring, arrest and torture of activists within labor unions and professional syndicates. Azzazi is a familiar face for many of us. He personally supervised the suppression of pro-democracy and Palestine solidarity demonstrations in downtown Cairo, attended by left wing activists involved in the labor movement and syndicates.

Azzazi, moreover, took part in Black Wednesday, 25 May 2005, when National Democratic Party thugs sexually attacked women reporters and activists in broad day light, under the protection of and in coordination with the police.

Azzazi’s name was also mentioned in a corruption case related to the education ministry. He was among police officers who received financial rewards from then Education Minister Ahmad Zaki Badr, allocated from the education ministry’s budget, after they helped put down protests by the ministry’s civil servants on 16 January 2011, roughly one week before the outbreak of the revolution.

I personally saw Azzazi only once, during a pro-democracy protest in front of the Lawyers Syndicate, in 2005. He was then standing together with SS Colonel Sherif el-Qamati, of the Counter-Communism Bureau.

Interestingly, there are two more members of the Azzazi family who are part of the dissolved SS, according to the SS family tree compiled by Moftasa: Lt. Colonel Khaled el-Azzazi and Colonel Hosni el-Azzazi. But no information is available yet on them.

So, where is Brigadier Ahmad el-Azzazi now? Is he being investigated? Is he in prison? Or is he part of the musical chairs game the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces is playing.

He tortured and raped leftist blogger Muhammad el-Sharqawi on 25 May 2006, in Qasr el-Nil Police Station.

Qasr el-Nil Police Station have gained notoriety among Egyptian activists because of the involvement of its officers in the crackdowns on Kefaya’s demonstrations in Tahrir Sq, Talaat Harb Sq and Abdel Khaleq Tharwat St. The place has become synonymous with Major Samawa’l Abu Sehla, who helped kidnap leftist blogger Muhammad el-Sharqawi, who was later tortured and sodomized by Abu Sehla and State Security officer Sherif el-Qamati.

But the old building has also a long history of torture and death of detainees in custody, the Torture in Egypt Blog reminds us.

[Above: Police Major Samawa’l Abu Sehla, identified by Sharqawi to be his kidnapper, together with Sherif el-Qamati of State Security’s so-called Counter-Communism Bureau.]

[Above: SS Officer Sherif el-Qamati, who sexually abused Sharqawi]

More than 100 workers assembled in the morning near the Mahalla Train Station, where two buses had been hired to transport them to Cairo. One bus was to carry a delegation to the Ministry of Social Insurance, to express solidarity with the Center for Trade Union and Workers’ Services, and the other was to take the workers to the HQ of the General Federation of Trade Unions to stage a sit-in if their demands were not met.

The workers were shocked to find the buses’ owner showing up and instructing his drivers to leave immediately, citing threats from State Security agents of revoking the buses’ licenses and the closure of his business. The agents also were heavily present around the factory compound, and the city entrances/exits. When a group of workers moved to the train station, in an attempt to catch a ride to Cairo, they were met by State Security agents. They besieged the activists, including Muhammad el-Attar, in a circle, and refused to let them move for roughly an hour.

While a handful of workers managed to escape from the police, and trickled to Cairo in microbuses, back in the company, several hundred women workers in the garments-making Factory Section 4 went on strike for 45 mins, protesting the shortage in raw materials supply, which leads to the decrease in their bonuses, which are based on units produced.

Mahalla worker and blogger Kareem el-Beheiri has been following up on the situation there all throughout the day. You can read his postings here.

“There are murmurs in the factory among workers about a second attempt to go to Cairo and launch a sit-in at the General Federation,” he wrote. “There are also murmurs of possibly a new strike. Tension is running high.”

Those workers who managed to make it to Cairo, joined around 30 rights and labor activists who assembled inside the Ministry of Social Insurance compound around 1am to protest the closure of the Center for Trade Union and Workers’ Services offices in Naga’a Hammadi and Mahalla.

There was a group of Central Security Forces soldiers deployed outside the ministry building, in addition to usual faces from State Security’s Counter-Communism bureau and Qasr el-Nil Police Station. But they did not ban the activists’ silent protest. Still, it was amusing to watch plainclothes thugs deployed by the police to guard the ministry’s building.

The activists demanded to meet the Minister, and after negotiations with State Security agents, a delegation (including Kamal Abbas the CTUWS director and Karama Party MP Hamdeen Sabbahi) met with the minister’s assistant in charge of the NGOs portfolio, who basically told them, the decision to close down the CTUWS offices was not “the ministry’s call.” So who’s call was it, asked the activists. The woman refused to reply. “It’s of course a decision by State Security,” commented Kamal Abbas. Another meeting is scheduled on Monday between CTUWS officials and the Ministry.

Here’s a short video clip of today’s protest, shot by the anti-corruption watchdog Shayfeencom

The Center for Socialist Studies issued a statement denouncing the police assaults on labor activists and strikers. Human Rights Watch also blasted Mubarak’s regime’s crackdown on the CTUWS offices:

The Egyptian government should reverse its order to close two offices of the Center for Trade Union and Workers’ Services (CTUWS) and should cease harassing the organization, Human Rights Watch said today.
The organization offers legal aid to Egyptian factory workers, educates them as to their rights, and reports on labor-rights issues in the country. The Ministry of Social Solidarity has blamed the CTUWS for inciting widespread labor unrest around the country. Egyptian officials have ordered two branches of the CTUWS to close within the last two weeks.
“Closing the offices of a labor rights group won’t end labor unrest,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “The government should be upholding legal commitments to Egyptian workers instead of seeking a scapegoat.”
On April 11, approximately 100 police officers arrived at the CTUWS office in the Nile Delta town of al-Mahalla al-Kubra to deliver an administrative decision ordering its closure. This came just over a week after General al-Sharbini Hashish, head of the Local Council in the southern industrial town of Naga` Hammidi, issued an administrative decision on March 29 ordering the closure of the CTUWS branch there on the grounds that it violated Egypt’s law on associations, though the order did not specify how.
Government action against the Naga` Hammidi branch of the CTUWS began in mid-March, when officials from the Ministry of Manpower and Immigration called the center’s representatives in for questioning, saying they had orders to investigate the legality of the center’s operations. Days before Gen. Hashish issued the order to close the center, the local representative of the Ministry of Social Solidarity requested CTUWS representatives to come to the local office of the Interior Ministry’s office of State Security Investigations. They declined the invitation.
The government’s moves against the CTUWS come amid continuing labor unrest throughout Egypt. According to a March 2 story in the independent newspaper Al-Masri al-Youm, there were 222 sit-ins, strikes, and workers’ demonstrations in 2006. The largest was a public-sector textile workers’ strike at a factory in al-Mahalla al-Kubra in December 2006.
That strike came after the al-Mahalla office of the CTUWS helped inform textile workers of Prime Minister Ahmad Nazif’s March 3, 2006, decree that all public-sector textile workers’ year-end bonuses should henceforth be equal to two months’ salary, up as much as 500 percent from a flat, pre-tax bonus of 100 Egyptian pounds (US$18). Factory managers initially denied that the decree had been issued, saying that it was a nonbinding political promise. When representatives of the government-affiliated General Textile Worker’s Union failed to make good on their election promises to extract the increased bonus from the government, more than 20,000 workers at the Mahalla al-Kubra textile factory went on strike until the government offered a 45-day bonus.
Since then, thousands of workers have resigned from the General Textile Workers’ Union, saying the elections were fixed in favor of the government’s candidates, and more than 30,000 textile workers at other factories in the Delta have staged protests. Thousands of cement factory and railway workers, some of whom told reporters they were inspired by the Mahalla workers’ success, have staged protests ranging from slowdowns to strikes. Officials from the Ministry of Social Solidarity have blamed the CTUWS for the unrest on television talk shows and on the floor of the Shura Council, the upper house of Parliament.

You can find the HRW statement in Arabic here.

Keep your eyes on Mahalla.

Abu Omar–the Alexandrian cleric kidnapped 2003 by the CIA in Milan and rendered to Egypt where he was brutally tortured–showed up today at the Press Syndicate, defying the travel ban imposed on him by State Security as a condition for his release. Abu Omar took part in the Anti-Torture Forum, chaired by leftist activist Dr. Aida Seif el-Dawla, where he presented his testimony about his torture odyssey from Milan to Cairo, via Germany. “I was severely tortured by the Mukhabarat and State Security,” Abu Omar said. “I was electrocuted for months, till my whole body turned black.”

Abu Omar expressed fears of re-arrest by the Egyptian police for speaking to the media, but insisted he will keep on talking. “If I stay silent, these practices (by the Egyptian security services) will continue.” The cleric also pleaded to be allowed to leave Egypt, back to Italy.

Another political bomb was thrown by blogger Muhammad el-Sharqawi, who gave his testimony about the torture and sexual abuse he faced in Qasr el-Nil Police Station on 25 May 2006. For the first time, Sharqawi named his torturers.

“Police Major Samaw’al Muhammad Abu Sehla was the first to kidnap me from the car I was in on that day,” Sharqawi told the audience.

And, “the State Security officer who supervised my torture inside Qasr el-Nil Police Station is named Sherif.”

Sharqawi also expressed his frustration with the refusal of the authorities to open an investigation into his abuse, despite the repeated requests by his lawyers, accusing State Security of breaking into his house and stealing his laptop.

Egypt: Investigate Torture, Rape of Activist Blogger
(Cairo, March 19, 2007) — The Egyptian Interior Ministry should immediately investigate and prosecute the torture and rape of pro-democracy activist and blogger Muhammad al-Sharqawi in police custody last year, Human Rights Watch said today. The authorities must also protect him from any police intimidation.
Despite repeated requests from al-Sharqawi and his lawyers since the torture took place almost a year ago, authorities have yet to take any visible action to bring those responsible to justice. Al-Sharqawi, who has campaigned against torture and other human rights abuses at street protests, through his personal blog, and through interviews with the press, told Human Rights Watch that an officer he recognized as having been present when he was abused in custody “always seems to be waiting downstairs from my apartment,” and that unidentified men have come to his door to ask him if he was home and if he lives alone. Around 7 pm on March 10, he came home to find his laptop, which he said contained a new, unreleased video of police abuse, had been stolen. Though cash and other valuables were lying around the apartment, nothing else was taken. Al-Sharqawi told Human Rights Watch that he is no longer sleeping at home.
Also on March 10, the State Security Investigations department of the Interior Ministry issued a report to public prosecutors that named al-Sharqawi and 16 other bloggers, journalists and activists as being responsible for “spreading false news” that could harm Egypt’s image abroad and organizing demonstrations. Among those named in report were bloggers Wa’il Abbas and Alaa Seif al-Islam, who have played a central role in campaigning against police abuse through their blogs. The report also named `Abir al-Askari, a journalist for the weekly Al-Dustur who was assaulted by police at a May 11 demonstration, and leading activists from the Kifaya (“Enough”) movement. On March 15, police dispersed a Kifaya demonstration against proposed amendments to Egypt’s constitution and detained 21 protesters for two days.
“Almost a year after al-Sharqawi was tortured and raped in a police station, the authorities have taken no visible steps to hold to account those responsible for the crime,” Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch said. “Rather than allowing police to intimidate and harass this young activist, the Egyptian government should be doing everything it can to prosecute the officers who tortured him.”
Security forces first arrested al-Sharqawi on April 24 at a demonstration in support of judicial independence in Cairo and released him on May 23. Agents of the State Security Investigations (SSI) bureau of the Interior Ministry arrested him again on May 25 as he was leaving another peaceful demonstration in downtown Cairo. The demonstration on May 25 commemorated the one-year anniversary of violent attacks by police and ruling party supporters against journalists and demonstrators, who had been urging a boycott of a constitutional referendum.
Al-Sharqawi told Human Rights Watch that his captors beat him for hours and then raped him with a cardboard tube at the Qasr al-Nil police station before transferring him to the State Security Prosecutor’s office in Heliopolis. When his lawyers saw al-Sharqawi at the prosecutor’s office late at night on May 25, they immediately asked for him to receive a forensic medical examination and treatment for his injuries, which one lawyer described as the worst case of police abuse that he had seen in 12 years. The prosecutor refused this initial request, but noted al-Sharqawi’s injuries, and al-Sharqawi only saw a prison doctor four days later. His lawyers have not seen any report on al-Sharqawi’s injuries drafted by either the prosecutor or doctor, and the Interior Ministry has denied that he was tortured.
Al-Sharqawi’s lawyers said they filed three written requests with General Prosecutor Muhammad Faisal to investigate his allegations of torture, and al-Sharqawi told Human Rights Watch that he also repeatedly told the prosecutor he had been tortured in custody.
The authorities subsequently charged al-Sharqawi with “chanting slogans against the regime liable to disturb public order and social peace,” “insulting the president,” “insulting and assaulting officials in the course of performing their duties,” “calling for an unlicensed assembly,” and “disrupting traffic” and held him at Tora prison until a prosecutor ordered his release on July 18. His case is still open.
“Bloggers have shown the world how torture are endemic in Egypt’s police stations,” said Whitson. “The Egyptian government needs to show the world that it will bring the perpetrators of these serious crimes to justice.”
Egypt is a party to the Convention Against Torture as well as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. It is thus obliged to prohibit any form of torture and ill-treatment, and to take positive measures to protect victims by carrying out thorough, impartial and prompt investigations into allegations of torture and filing criminal charges where appropriate. Article 42 of Egypt’s constitution further provides that any person in detention “shall be treated in a manner concomitant with the preservation of his dignity” and that “no physical or moral (m`anawi) harm is to be inflicted upon him.”