CAIRO // Before Mohammed Bouazizi set himself aflame last December inspiring the protests that toppled Tunisia's authoritarian president, there was Egypt's Khalid Said.
The 28-year-old was sitting in an internet cafe in Alexandria when two police officers allegedly arrested and savagely beat him to death outside the cafe one year ago.
Today's planned memorial services and protests across Egypt will bring the spotlight back to police brutality amid incidents that have sparked new protests in recent weeks.
On Thursday, dozens of people clashed with police outside of the El Azbakia police station in Cairo after a minibus driver was allegedly beaten to death by a police officer. Police denied that there was any foul play, saying he suffered from a sudden drop in blood pressure. But angry family members and protesters lit the police station on fire and disrupted traffic. One of the victim's cousins alleged the man's corpse showed signs of torture, including electrocution.
This comes just days after allegations surfaced that the military conducted "virginity tests" on a group of women detained in Tahrir Square in March. The issue has been a mainstay of talk shows and newspaper columns and has tarnished the military's reputation as it struggles to hold the reins of Egypt until elections later this year.
Bahey Eldin Hassan, director of the Cairo Institute for Human Rights, said: "I believe the people who are in power now after the revolution have not realized yet that this revolution was based on police brutality. The revolution was launched on the annual police day, when officers celebrate. The protests were mainly against the corrupt performance of the police."
There was still widespread distrust of a national police force, according to a survey, from the Abu Dhabi Gallup Centre issued in Cairo yesterday. The report suggested that policymakers consider creating local police forces that have the support of the community to rebuild security in the country.
Groups should also study the possibility of allowing towns to elect their own police chiefs in a bid to dole out power to communities to deal with security and other issues, the report said.
"A rebuilt (and more trusted) local police force will improve overall security," the report said. "Civil society for its part should provide opportunities for greater citizen cooperation at the neighbourhood level, building trust and lowering the perception of security issues."
The death of Said is considered a turning point in Egyptian politics, with the disgust over his alleged torture motivating thousands of youths to begin regular protests against police brutality.
Walter Armbrust, a professor at the University of Oxford based in Cairo, said: "You could almost say the revolution began with him in June 2010. The Khalid Said protests were part of a long string of events that led to the build-up of the revolutions, but the incident stood out as an important early moment for the movement."
An image of Said's deformed corpse was spread across the internet and social networking platforms in 2010 as a horrific example of brutality in Hosni Mubarak's police state.
Wael Ghonim, the Google executive who was arrested by Egyptian police during the uprising, called upon hundreds of thousands of supporters of the "We are all Khalid Said" page on Facebook to protest on January 25. That call is considered a crucial part of the mosaic of events and social circumstances that led to hundreds of thousands of Egyptians taking to the streets across the country to force Mubarak to step down as president in February.
Ahmed Said, the brother of Khalid, said in an interview that the family was still in limbo waiting for the court in Alexandria to present its final conclusion on the case. He alleges Khalid was tortured and murdered by police for possessing evidence that some police officers were involved in a drug deal. The police officers argued that Khalid was resisting arrest and suffocated after trying to swallow a bag of hashish.
"Tomorrow, we are just going to go stand on the beach and remember Khalid," he said. "We don't know from there what we are going to do, but we want to have a memorial to remember my brother."
