Tag: videogate

The officer who appeared in the “slapping video” has been identified by the independent weekly Al-Fagr.

His name is Lieutenant Mustafa Shehata, of El-Haram Police Station in Giza. Though an Interior Minister official told Wael Abdel Fattah of Al-Fagr, the officer was under “administrative detention,” it turned out the officer was still working at the station, but was under “administrative investigation.”

Al-Fagr journalists made another breakthrough, identifying the victim in the rape video.

Wael Abdel Fattah of Al-Fagr initially received a tip that the rape video might have been filmed in Omraniya Police Station, Giza. The abused citizen, Al-Fagr was told, was a microbus driver. Al-Fagr journalist Kamal Murad picked the lead, combed for three days the microbuses station in Omraniya, with no success. Last Wednesday, however, Kamal received an anonymous call on his mobile phone, informing him that the driver worked at Nahia bus station, which follows Bulaq al-Dakrour Police Station.

Kamal went to the bus station, only to discover fear among drivers. The police agents, he said, distributed the video among drivers as a way of humiliating the driver who appeared in the film, and terrorize the rest of the drivers into submission to police rule.

Kamal discovered the victim’s name was Emad Muhammad Ali Kabeer, holder of a preparatory school degree (E’adadiya), and the second among nine brothers and sisters.
Emad’s source of income is a microbus, and lives with his family in one of Kerdassa’s village. His father, according to Wael, passed away after he learned what happened to his son.

Interviewing him was not easy, as Emad has been terrorized and traumatized after his experience. He fears speaking, especially after he received recently phone calls from the interior ministry threatening him if he spoke of his ordeal, after the video surfaced to the Egyptian blogosphere and caused uproar in the independent press. Emad, according to Al-Fagr, was told what happened to him will be repeated to other members of his family.

With difficulty, Emad told Al-Fagr, the rape incident goes back to 13 January 2006, when while driving he spotted two unknown individuals in plainclothes beating his cousin, Ahmad el-Sayyed Ali, a butane gas pipes seller. When Emad enquired why they were assaulting Ahmad, one of the attackers took out a gun, and started hitting him, and took him to Nahia Police Station, where he learned the attacker was Ashraf Abdel Maqsoud, an officer with the Supplies Department (Shortet el-Tamween).

Emad tried to ask for help from an officer he knew at the station called Muhammad Hassanein, but the latter declined.

Inside Nahia Police Station, the corporals and the soldiers organized a torture party for Emad, where they beat him with sticks, till he fell on the floor, then started kicking them with their shoes, showering him with insults.

He was later taken to Bulaq el-Dakrour Police Station, where he was locked up for seven days.
On the eighth, he was raped.

Emad was taken to a room inside the police station, where his rape was supervised by officer Islam Nabih, the Assistant Sheriff, and was videotaped by Police Corporal Reda Fathi el-Sayyed, according to Al-Fagr.

Emad told Al-Fagr the torture fiesta started by severe beatings till he fell on the ground. Seven corporals took rounds in kicking him, after his feet were tied by a metal chain, and hands handcuffed. His feet were lifted up, by some machine attached to the room’s door.
Clothes covering his lower bottom were torn by the corporals, who started whipping him, till he almost passed out. That’s when they took him down, untied him, and asked him to say: “I am a woman. I am a fag.”

Despite his pleas, his torturers continued.

The corporals rubbed some cream into his anal opening, and then inserted a wooden stick into it, while videotaping him by a mobile phone camera. This went on for an hour, Emad told Al-Fagr. After that, he was left on the floor in one of the room’s corners.

The police fabricated charges of “resisting the authorities,” where Police Officer Muhammad Hassanein testified against Emad.

Emad was released later, and decided o keep his mouth shut about what happened. However, two months ago he said he was told by a fellow driver that he saw the rape video on a mobile phone. He assumed the police wanted to humiliate him in public.

Still he kept his silence, until his elder brother was arrested for refusing to pay LE5 to a police agent… His mother had gone to Bulaq el-Dakrour Police Station to inquire after the reason for her eldest son’s arrest; she was insulted, and kicked out of the station by the deputy sheriff who threatened to issue a detention order. Emad then decided to make a copy of the video, and went to the Interior Minister’s house in Lebanon Sq, Mohandessin, and gave it to the officer in charge of the minister’s security. The officer made a phone call for few minutes. He told Emad to go to the Complaints Department at the Interior Ministry, in Lazoughly Sq.

Emad went, and spoke with senior Interior Ministry officers. Half an hour after leaving the building, he received a call on his mobile from his brother, saying “They released me.”
However, Emad was arrested on his way home, and taken again to Bulaq Police Station, where he was met by General Abdel Wahab Khalil, Director of Giza Investigation Police, and his deputy General Gad Gameel. They interrogated him for two days, last Sunday and Monday, and then transferred him to the Bulaq Prosecutor’s office in 6th of October City. Emad was told by the prosecutor that the General Prosecutor asked for dropping the case. Other senior security officials, Emad was too scared to mention their names, asked him to drop the case. So Emad did that, citing his fears of the police fabricating drug charges against him, and threats of harming members of his family.