Egyptians abused by police now struggle for justice

Reporting from Cairo —  A tear rolled down Eweis Abdullah’s cheek, but his voice didn’t crack or waver. He had told his story of injustice often over the years; a cadence settled over it.

He was born a farmer’s son, running through his father’s wheat fields and growing into a man who raised cattle and chickens at the edge of Cairo. The land became more valuable as the city grew, and local police officers, armed with pistols and threats, decided they wanted it.

“I was a well-known merchant. I was respected,” he said as he stood in a downtown courthouse hallway unrolling papers that recorded years of outrage. “But I’ve lost it all trying to protect my land from the police. They looted us. They attacked us. They tortured one of my sons. They arrested another on false charges. They hoped we would leave. I will never give up my land.”

Whispered or told in tears, tales of abuse, brutality, corruption and sins committed over three decades of Hosni Mubarak’s police state seeped through the courthouse’s stone corridors. They gave voice to the scarred and the vanished. A wife pleaded with a judge to jail the police officers who beat her husband to death; a sandaled perfume seller wanted street cops to stop demanding bribes.

The police were like winter sandstorms blowing out of the desert, inescapable, permeating every crack of life. Low paid, they turned to the citizens they were charged to protect, collecting kickbacks, making false arrests, perfecting torture and instilling fear into anyone who challenged their whims.

Mubarak is gone. The army has taken over the country. And Egyptians, from shopkeepers to schoolteachers, are newly empowered, seeking justice and recompense. They file past crowded courtrooms, broken filing cabinets, prayer rugs and lawyers with scuffed shoes and satchels, where before they never dared wander.

“The police were just a tool in the hand of the ruler,” said Abdullah, waiting outside a clerk’s office. “But hopefully things are different today. That’s why I’m here. I’m confident the military will get me my rights back.”

A man can dream. The country, after all, has endured a revolution and heard promises of better days.

Abbas Mohammed Abbas would like just one uncorrupted day. A heavyset breathless man, he too carried papers that crinkled like ancient maps. He pointed to handwritten words, scrawled numbers. Police destroyed his sidewalk perfume stand during last month’s protests. He sought 4,500 Egyptian pounds, or about $765, in compensation.

“I’ve been to the district attorney. He sent me to the Finance Ministry, who sent me to the tax assessment authority, who sent me to the minister of social development, who sent me back here to the district attorney,” he said. “Things are supposed to have changed. I fear I’m being played for a fool.”

He knew all the police officers in his neighborhood; their faces were as familiar as their palms, which he saw every day as he slid a bit of money into them. He didn’t attack and burn police stations as many did during the protests. But he understood the rage one feels for thick black uniforms and tilted berets.

“I lost everything. It’s all gone,” he said. “I worked in Libya for two years as a laborer to save money to buy perfume. I can’t marry. I can’t afford it. I’ve lost even the chance to be a man.”

The police who harassed him in the past are the same ones today claiming that they were also victims in an oppressive state. Police officers are trying to rehabilitate their images, setting up Facebook pages, showing solidarity with protesters. It is a curious shift in fortunes, leaving a nation unsure where blame ends and forgiveness begins.

Aishah Hassan was not ready to offer redemption. She walked another hallway in the courthouse, carrying papers in a plastic bag. A slight woman in a white head scarf, she was looking for the right judge to free her son. She spoke to three men in wooden chairs, all with their own complaints of abuse and corruption, and another man in a slant of sunlight near a cracked window.

“The police framed my son on a drug charge,” she said. “He was tortured. He has marks on his body. I went to the police station and they kept me for 24 hours. They hit me. Four police officers beat my other boy who was with me. They did it right in front of my eyes. They told my son unless he confessed to the charge, they would hurt us.”

Such stories ring with similarity across the country. The police often trumped up charges on a father, cousin or son to extort money from families. Hassan said that after her son was arrested, she had to pay police to allow her to visit him. She had to pay them to bring him meals.

“I paid thousands of Egyptian pounds to the police and our lawyer,” she said. “I don’t know why the police did this, but they terrorized everyone in our neighborhood. My son was scared for me and he confessed. He was sentenced to one year in jail.”

She had come to the wrong courthouse, though. No one had ever told her about jurisdiction or the other legal words she was learning. She just drove to the biggest courthouse she knew. Lawyers suggested that she return to her home in Beheira province, a three-hour drive north through the Nile Delta, and file her complaint there.

Too mad to cry, she walked down the stairs, past the tank parked outside.

Abdullah, the farmer, has been battling police since 1998, when his property was rezoned for commercial use as Cairo sprawled farther into the desert, where developers, like strange magicians, grew grass and built villas for the rich, many of them connected to Mubarak’s ruling party. The police saw an opportunity.

“They wanted the land so they could sell it,” he said. “They broke through our gates and attacked our houses. I had to send my daughter away. They planted weapons and charged my son with illegal possession. He’s still in jail. I’ve spent all these years protecting my land from the police. My cattle and chicken businesses are ruined. But they can’t have the land. It is like a son to me.”

He was once a man of substance, but now, dressed in a dirty tunic, his only hint of refinement is the white sliver of a mustache.

He wanted to be the man he was in that other time, but as he unrolled his papers, pointing to words that signified injustices, he seemed to know he had become someone else.

jeffrey.fleishman@latimes.com

Amro Hassan of The Times’ Cairo bureau contributed to this report.