I contributed a chapter to a newly published book on Egypt’s New Authoritarian Republic, edited by Robert Springborg and Abdel-Fattah Mady.

Hussein Bilal reportedly left the country sometime after the revolution to work with security forces in the UAE, returning after the 2013 military coup. He then resumed his security career, rising through the ranks of the rebranded Homeland Security apparatus. Bilal held top security posts in Ismailia and Alexandria governorates before being appointed to run Cairo’s Homeland Security branch last week.

During Police Day celebrations, held today at the Egyptian Police Academy, Sisi honored some officers, including Homeland Security Maj. Gen. Mostafa Ali Sameh Mostafa, the son of the former deputy director of the State Security Police.

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.

UPDATE: I was honored to speak with the author of the study, in a Zoom meeting.

General Saber is a veteran of State Security Police’s Counter-Communism Bureau, charged with monitoring and smashing left-wing and labor organizations. He has personally detained and tortured scores of leftists throughout his career. The same bureau later was expanded, prior to the 2011 revolution, to include the monitoring of NGOs and human rights groups.