30 Dec 2019; MEMO: Egyptian rights Gamal Eid yesterday said that he was being “assaulted and tortured by plain-clothes individuals on the street, in front of passers-by.”
“Vehicle without plates, plain-clothes police officers with pistols assaulting and drowning me into paint next to my house,” Eid said on Facebook attaching a photo showing his face burst with paint colours.
“Sisi’s interior ministry has become a gang,” Eid added referring to the Egyptian incumbent president Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi’s government. He went on calling for overthrowing what he described as a “police-centric regime.”
Eid’s friend, Tarek Khater, said on Facebook that “three ordinary civilian cars had intercepted Eid on the road, where armed individuals came out of it, beat him and then splattered him with paint.”
“The gunmen were threatening any of the passers-by who had approached to help Eid,” Khater pointed out.
This is not the first time for Eid to be attacked by security officers dressed in plain clothes. The rights lawyer was reported to have been robbed, beaten and tortured over the past few months.
Since becoming president in 2014, Sisi has overseen a far-reaching crackdown that has swept up Islamists and liberal opponents. Sisi has repeatedly denied torturing and holding political prisoners and his backers say the measures were necessary to stabilise Egypt after its 2011 uprising.
