Revolution in Egypt, the next step: Egyptians taking on state security

Pushing system change one step further, now that Prime Minister Ahmed Shawfiq was forced to leave, Egyptians take on the hated and feared state security apparatus, which had been responsible for torture, disappearance and other crimes agaist the people. As AlMasr AlYoum reports, state security officials together with the deputy interior minister actually laid down and recorded in written form (sic!) a roadmap for the desctruction of secret documents which had been amassed by the state security, known as Amn IlDawla in Egypt. This become clear from a document which was secured by protestors storming the State Security Cairo Headquarters in the district of Nasser City last night. Pictures from inside the building show masses of shredded paper and tons of documents which were meant to be destroyed or moved to the HQ from other state security offices.

(Picture 3 is from AlMasr AlYoum, pictures 1 and 2 from the blog Luelabie)

The taking on of the feared Amn Ildawla (or State Security) had already started on Friday night. After Friday's protest in Alexandria people moved to the state security building, where they forced members of Amn IlDawla to retreat to the upper floors of the building. The violent clashes, including shooting with live ammunition and the throwing of molotov cocktails, caused at least 2 people to be seriously injured.

Also in Giza, Cairo protesters surrounded the building of state security but reportedly stopped short of entering the building on Friday. Another state security building, the headquarters in 6th of October city was then conquered by protesters on Saturday . Just as in Alexandria one day earlier the demonstrators allegedly tried to prevent state security staff from burning and destroying important documents. AlMasr AlYoum provided an article summing up all the events involving Amn IlDawla buildings on Saturday.

Today the government called on protesters to hand all the documents seized from Amn IlDawla buildings to the military in order to protect sensible documents and not endanger state security. Even if some people might respond to it, this call came a little late as various facebook groups such as „صفحة : فضائح و تسريبات أمن الدولة" had already started to publish information from the Amn IlDawla files. In reference to WikiLeaks (which by the way was said to have been extremely helpful to the Egyptian revolution) some facebook users already call one of these groups „FB leaks“. Also there are already specific hashtags for twitter, under #amndawla and #SSLeaks you find various extracts of secret documents. And from Twitter we also learn that the hunt for Amn IlDawla and their files goes on: plenty people are calling for a storm on the downtown Lazoughly office of Amn IlDawla, as there is some confusion as to where exctly the office is located the famous blogger Sandmonkey tweeds that the protesters are first meeting at the Midan Tahrir now, in order to then take on the next building of Amn IlDawla (as soon as they know where it is obviously). 

Another addition: The blogger Zeinobia offers much more detailed and vivid insights into the storming of and discoveries in the Amn IlDawla buildings in Cairo and Alexandria. A lot of video material is included as well as several photographs. An absolute must-read!