Essam Atta, a 24-year old Egyptian is the latest victim of ongoing police violence in Egypt. Essam had been arrested on February 25 during the clashes in the Coptic Quarter of Cairo. He was later sentenced to two years in prison. It was his attempt to smuggle a SIM card for a mobile phone into prison that eventually cost him his life. The guards at Tora prison "punished" him with repeated, severe abuse (for the graphic details please read AlJazeera's article on the matter), and Essam Atta died shortly after being delivered to Qasr al Ayni hospital. It was the El Nadeem Center for Rehabilitation of Victims of Violence, a well-known Egyptian NGO, that broke the news about Atta's abuse and consequent death on Thursday. Pictures of Atta's corpse soon went viral on Twitter and Facebook. Within no time a facebook page named "We are all Essam Atta" was created, reminding of the page "We are all Khaled Said", which had provided one of many organising platforms for the January 25 protests. Khaled Said was beaten to death by police officers in the streets of Alexandria in June 2010. Official reports stated he had died by swallowing a package of drugs - but photos of his heavily distorted face, smuggled out of the morgue by his brother, told a different story and soon went viral on the internet. Earlier this week, the trial of the police officers that had killed Said was concluded, sentencing them to 7 years in jail. This comparatively mild punishment already provoked a outcry - however, the outrage could not prove strong enough to re-ignite the revolutionary fire. Once the news of Atta's death spread, the parallels to Said were instantly seen, and indeed the Friday protests in Tahrir attrackted more followers than in the previous weeks, and make wonder whether Atta's cruel death could provide the rallying cause for the reviving of a revolution that many already believed to be dead...
Al Jazeera has a very good article on the issue, also highlighting the parallels to the case of Khaled Said.
If you want to learn more about Khaled Said, and how his death at the hands of Egyptian police became a rallying cause for protests on January 25, have a look at the Wikipedia article. Also the highly reccomendable blog The Arabist provides plenty of background information, colllected in June 2010.
Also the popular blogger Zeinobia comments on the events in her Egypian Chronicles. As did most other Egyptian news magazines as Bikya Masr, Al Ahram Online, the Egyptian Daily News and Al Masry Al Youm.
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