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Resources, photos and videos of Egyptian police officers involved in torture and human rights violations.

General Rushdi el-Qamari اللواء رشدي القمري

Posted on By 3arabawy

During the uprising, the regime took down the internet from the night of 27 January till 3 February, after blocking websites like Twitter and Facebook on the previous day. The government also took down the mobile phone networks and SMS, with the complicity of the three operators Mobinil, Vodafone Egypt and Etisalat, as well as internet service providers like TEDATA.

The government body that orchestrated the blackout was the National Telecommunication Regulatory Authority (NTRA), headed by the former Telecommunication Minister Tarek Kamel (whose brother Cairo University President Hossam Kamel is currently the target of an impeachment campaign by faculty staff and student protesters over his ties to the Mubarak regime), together with representatives from the police, Mukhabarat and government officials.

From SS Officers

The Interior Ministry’s representative on the board of NTRA during the revolution was General Rushdi el-Qamari, whose profile pictures I found on the Nasr City SS DVDs.

Little I managed to find out about the career of General Rushdi Muhammad Sayyed Ahmad el-Qamari, before he became the head of the General Administration of Police Communications in July 2010. But usually heads of such sensitive departments in the interior ministry come from the ranks of State Security Police, especially as he assumed the membership of the NTRA board, sharing seats with the Mukhabarat.

Essam Sharaf’s cabinet has come out few days ago saying the regime’s shutting down of telecommunications was “inappropriate.” But has anyone been held accountable? What happened to NTRA board members, including General Qamari? Have they been investigated? Do they still keep their posts? Or are we continuing with the musical chairs game?

SS Brigadier General Ahmad el-Azzazi عميد أمن دولة أحمد العزازي

Posted on By 3arabawy
From SS Officers

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.