"Security is like a fire. A small amount is useful and gives warmth. A big amount
engulfs the whole house."
MER - Washington - 31 Oct:
After decades of CIA "help" and American "assistant" to Egypt,the
once civil country now has a brutal, terroristic official militancy that rivals the old
Iran of the Shah. American-sponsored regimes in the Middle East have a severe tendency to
rule by fear, intimidation, and repression.
Today's Americanized Egypt is a place of still growing politicaland economic
polarizations. It is a country partially stripped of its political and cultural dignity,
bound to a series of imprisoning treaties and arrangements, with an increasingly corrupt
and inept regime dependent on American hand-outs as well as the tools and techniques of
repression. Through a brutal and oftentimes sadistic campaign of lawlessness and terror,
the Mubarak regime has crushed, maybe only temporarily, the growing challenges to its
rule.
But such tactics don't simply fade away; they infect every aspect of society and they
foster a counter radicalization and militancy. This story is one result:
OUTRAGE OVER EGYPT POLICE BRUTALITY
By ANTHONY SHADID
EL-KUSHEH, Egypt (AP - 10/31) -- It began inconspicuously. Two young Christians killed
in a poor region of Egypt known for its vendettas and guns.
The police crackdown that followed in the mostly Christian farming town wasn't
commonplace, however. Villagers, human rights groups and church officials say hundreds
were arrested in a monthlong campaign of terror that included torture, threats of rape,
hostage-taking and even bribes to officers for lenient treatment.
The story has struck a nerve in Egypt and abroad because it touches on a sensitive
matter: the status of Egypt's small and sometimes vulnerable Christian minority.
But beneath the charges and recriminations may rest a bigger question about abuses by a
powerful security force that fought and defeated Islamic militants. Many say it now seems
to act as a law unto itself, with little oversight and less accountability.
``It is not a matter of national unity,'' said Rifaat el-Said, an Egyptian opposition
leader. ``It is a matter of the behavior of the police and a matter of human rights.''
The ordeal began with the overtones of religious strife, a specter that hangs ominously
over southern Egypt and its Coptic Christian minority. For years, Muslim militants
occasionally targeted them as part of their insurgency against the government that has
cost more than 1,250 lives since 1992.
The two men, aged 25 and 27, were found dead in front of a village school in August.
Human rights groups and villagers said police feared the killer was Muslim and were wary
of the repercussions that might have on a town 70 percent Christian and 30 percent Muslim.
Police, they said, wanted a Christian suspect.
In ensuing weeks, reports said hundreds were detained, including elderly residents,
women and even an 18-month-old boy taken in with his mother. Villagers said more than
1,000 were detained; human rights investigators said it was at least 300. ``The police
acted as their temper dictated,'' said Basada Gabriel Abdel-Masih, a priest in the
village.
The government says only 14 people were detained as part of ``an ordinary criminal
investigation.'' About a dozen claims of torture were investigated, and none was found to
have occurred, said Nabil Osman, an Egyptian government spokesman.
``There is no proof that there was torture,'' he said.
But at Abdel-Masih's Church of the Angel in el-Kusheh, where minarets and steeples rise
above the dirt roads and squat huts, villagers in dirty peasant gowns, their faces swarthy
from work in the fields, gathered to show the aftermath of their detention.
The ankles and wrists of some still bore the signs of what they said were cuts from
plastic or rough cloth used to string them from the ceiling. Others showed scars they said
were left by electric shocks to their ears, abdomen and genitals.
Boktor Abul-Yamin, a 60-year-old villager who police initially believed killed the two
men, said he received shocks and beatings until he vomited blood. Police detained his
entire family and threatened to rape his wife and daughters, he said.
They also held him for 34 days, he said, then released him when another Christian was
charged.
``They beat me like a donkey,'' said Abul-Yamin. ``Now when I see a policeman in the
street, I think he's a devil. The way he looks, he's a devil.
``There are no laws in this village.''
Sensitive to any criticism of its treatment of Christians, the government has reacted
fiercely to suggestions the police crackdown was motivated by the villagers' faith.
>From President Hosni Mubarak down, officials have said the charges are a plot to
discredit Egypt and that no discrimination -- legal or otherwise -- is tolerated against
Christians.
But critics say missing in the denials is any pledge to curb the excesses by police, a
force the Egyptian Organization of Human Rights said acted as though they enjoyed ``total
immunity from accountability and punishment.''
The crackdown in El-Kusheh follows another widely reported incident in which the
brother of a theft suspect was killed in custody, reportedly by electrocution. His death
provoked a riot in April in the Nile Delta town of Belqas.
``Security is like a fire,'' warned Milad Hanna, a Coptic Christian and former
lawmaker. ``A small amount is useful and gives warmth. A big amount engulfs the whole
house.''
