New Day In Egypt: Protesters Sack State Security Offices

[Hissyspit]

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/03/07/109966/egypt-faces-new-turmoil-looted.html



Israa Abdel Fattah, 32, an Egyptian pro-democracy activist, holds classified files about her. | Hannah Allam/MCT)

New day in Egypt: Protesters sack State Security offices

By Hannah Allam and Mohannad Sabry | McClatchy Newspapers

- snip -

The military-led interim authority has demanded that the classified files kept by Mubarak's dreaded internal spy agency be returned. Instead, they're being scattered throughout Egypt like confetti, with new finds turning up on Facebook and Twitter hourly, forcing the government to respond to them and raising fears among some activists that their value has been reduced for any future prosecutions for torture and kidnapping.

What the documents reveal is both salacious and sinister.

- snip -

Israa Abdel Fattah, 32, a labor organizer and blogger, shared her personal file with McClatchy and marveled at the thoroughness of the surveillance, which included detailed transcripts of e-mails sent from her personal Gmail account and phone conversations she'd had with her ex-husband. The feeling of violation was indescribable, she said.

"I knew they were watching me, but I never imagined they knew all this information about me," she said. "My friends tried to take me out to dinner that night; they tried to make me laugh, but I couldn't. I told them I should be alone, so I took my papers and went home."

MORE

Earlier Article:

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/03/05/109887/egyptian-protesters-storm-state.html


Hannah Allam/MCT

Ahmed Rabea, 35, holds a photo of a friend who was detained by Egypt's dreaded State Security and hasn't been heard from since.

Egyptian Protesters Storm State

CAIRO, Egypt — Trudging through dungeon-like cells and mounds of shredded documents, hundreds of Egyptians on Saturday surged into the Cairo headquarters of the dreaded State Security apparatus for an unprecedented look inside buildings where political prisoners endured horrific torture.

Some former prisoners sobbed as they saw their old cells, recalling electric shocks and severe beatings. Families held passport photos of missing relatives and were desperate to explore the dank chambers for clues to their fates.

- snip -

Human Rights Watch, the international advocacy group, has said in its reports that "torture in Egypt is a widespread and persistent phenomenon. Security forces and the police routinely torture or ill-treat detainees, particularly during interrogation. In most cases, officials torture detainees to obtain information and coerce confessions, occasionally leading to death in custody."

For those who were jailed at the complex, the memories are haunting.

"I saw people's nails being ripped out and people hung from the ceiling by their arms or legs," said Adel Reda, 39, trembling as he recounted his nine months inside the complex. "They would throw our food in sand before giving it to us and splash us with cold water day and night. Sometimes it was so dark you couldn't see your hands."

When asked whether he was ever allowed access to an attorney, Reda raised his hands heavenward and replied: "My lawyer was God."

MORE