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Cairo Law Center Raided, Staff Detained

By Brendan McKenna

In Sunday interviews published in The Washington Post, some of the approximately 30 members of Cairo's Hisham Mubarak Law Center for Human Rights who were detained last week described their treatment by authorities, who held them at military intelligence headquarters for two nights and three days for interrogation. The center's lawyers have been providing legal assistance to anti-government demonstrators in Egypt. Arrests like those made at the legal center indicate that the Egyptian regime's tradition of extrajudicial detentions is persisting, according to McClatchy Newspapers' Shashank Bengali. He writes that arbitrary arrests, which are permitted under the official state of emergency that's existed for decades, are among the longest-running complaints that Egyptians have against their government. But in a new twist, Bengali reports that Egyptian soldiers -- rather than police -- are now making some of the arrests. Meanwhile, The Wall Street Journal reports that two police officers accused of the brutal killing of Khaled Said, the young man whose death sparked the current uprising, have escaped jail and are at large. Lawyers told the Journal that the escape occurred on Jan. 28, when police stations in Alexandria, Egypt, were attacked and set ablaze. The head of the two policemen's defense...

Full post as published by Legal Blog Watch on February 07, 2011 (boomark / email).