Tag: students

From SS Officers

One of the photos I found on the Nasr City SS DVDs, was that of General Hisham el-Dafrawi, the infamous director of the dissolved agency’s “Students Bureau” who made his career out of tormenting student activists.

Rights lawyer Gamal Eid, during his student activism days at Ain Shams University in the late ’80s, came in contact with Dafrawi when the latter was still a junior SS officer:

الرائد ، ثم المقدم !!!! وحتى اصبح اللواء هشام الدفراوي أو : الظالم المبتسم
هو الاتخن بين ضباط أمن الدولة ، وأكثرهم ضحكا وابتساما و … وحشية.
مسئول عن مكتب طلاب جامعة عين شمس في الثمانينات ، وكان المسئول والمخطط لواقعة الاعتداء على الطلاب اليساريين والناصريين في سجن أبو زعبل خلال الانتفاضة الفلسطينية الأولى 1987، على يد الجماعات الإسلامية !
26طالب يساري وناصري ، يطلق عليهم نحو 280إسلامي متشدد في السجن وتصوير الواقعة انها مشادة بين سجناء!
نظرا لقدرته الفذة على القمع وتلفيق القضايا ، تدرج حتى أصبح مسئول مكتب الطلاب في جهاز مباحث امن الدولة.
ومنذ تولي مكتب الطلاب المركزي ، بدئنا نشهد عمليات تلفيق القضايا الجنائية ” ضرب ، سرقة ، أداب … الخ” للطلاب اليساريين خاصة بجامعة عين شمس والقاهرة.
فضلا عن إهدار وتزوير كل الانتخابات الطلابية ، سواء عبر الضرب والحرمان أو الاعتقالات للطلاب المعارضين.
هشام الدفراوي لا يزال حرا !!

From an SS Major in charge of Ain Shams University in the 1980s, Dafrawi ascended the ranks quickly to become the general in directing the “Students Bureau.” He oversaw the rigging of student union elections, arrests, beatings and torture of student activists, Gamal Eid wrote me.

Dafrawi also, according to Gamal Eid, orchestrated the assault on 26 leftist and Nasserist students in Tora prison, on the hands of Islamist prisoners in 1987. The students were detained part of a crackdown on the solidarity movement with the Palestinian intifada. The incident was portrayed as some riot or scuffle between prisoners, but Eid asserts it was Dafrawi who persuaded the Islamist militant prisoners to attack “those leftists.” Dafrawi, moreover, enjoyed framing leftist student activists in Ain Shams and Cairo universities in criminal cases, according to Eid.

Dafrawi’s name was also mentioned in a corruption case related to the education ministry. He was among police officers, including General Ahmad el-Azzazi, 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. Why not? Dafrawi and Badr, it seems were good friends, and were even hanging out at Amr Diab’s concerts!

So where is Dafrawi today? Is he part of the newly founded National Security Sector (NSS)? Is he still commanding those SS-turned-NSS who will continue spying on students in Cairo University and elsewhere?

In all cases, according to Eid, Dafrawi has not been put on trial and remains a free man. And this is not acceptable.