Mahalla State Security Police torturers exposed.
Tag: ss
Resources on Egypt’s State Security Police
The AUC Gestapo
Around a couple of years before I left the AUC in 2001, the administration had brought this notorious State Security Police General Ashraf Kamal to be in charge of campus security. During my interrogation under torture in Lazoughly in October 2000, the SS officers were repeatedly bragging the “AUC is ours. Our men run it.”
What went on from the moment this General took control has been nothing but the increasing “militarization” of the university security: more guards, more walkie talkies, an increasing gestapo-like attitude in dealing with student activists, more restrictions on political activism, severe intimidation of activists and staff.
AUC professors had spoken to me several times about this guy, expressing their sheer frustration that more or less he has the final say in how things are run in the administration, not the university’s academic staff–which is the same complaint heard from their colleagues in the local universities.
It seems now General Ashraf and his henchmen are busying themselves with the workers on campus.. I was reading this blog, when I came across stories of workers who died during the four-year effort to erect the new AUC campus out in the desert. General Ashraf didn’t have any doubts whom to blame for the deaths.
The tragedies happened because of human error, said Gen. Ashraf Kamal, head of security. “All the deaths occurred through mistakes made by the workers themselves, not by the company,” he said.
And if that isn’t enough:
Campus security was in fact involved in quelling protests, after several hundred workers rallied for the family of one dead worker who was left without compensation, according to Gen. Mohsen Wadie, deputy director for security.
Vodafone admits handing data to Mubarak’s Police
We have to expose the company for this:
Vodafone’s global head of content standards, Annie Mullins, told a Westminster eForum event on Wednesday that following food riots at Egyptian government-subsidized bakeries in March 2008, the Egyptian authorities demanded communications data from Vodafone to help identify rioters.
“We’ve had to hand over data on people in Egypt due to the food riots,” said Mullins. “Regulation can be a Trojan horse.”
Vodafone is not the first service provider to be forced to hand over customer data. In 2005, Yahoo gave Chinese authorities details which helped in the arrest and conviction of journalist Shi Tao.
Which riots happened in March 2008? The “food riots” Mullins is referring to are for sure the 6th and the 7th of April. There has to be a campaign against the company to expose these practices and find out more information about what happened. I’m honestly shocked how all parties involved in the surveillance, whether its Vodafone or the Egyptian Ministry of Telecommunication, are just too happy to go on the record stating publicly their crimes.
The surveillance is so systematic and rampant, that even Pope Shenouda had come out banning the Copts from confessing over the phone, coz “telephones may be tapped, and the confessions would be heard by State Security”!!