Protestors heard underground calls for help
After hundreds of protesters barging in Egypt’s state security offices in both Cairo and Alexandria, locked up prisoners were found and freed.
Protesters started hearing calls for help from under the ground when they stormed the state security office in Alexandria. The protestors reportedly released from one of the office’s tunnel cells a prisoner that has been there for 20 years. Yet, this has not so far been confirmed.
It has been said that the death of the young Egyptian activist Khaled Said in Alexandria’s state security branch was a major catalyst in sparking the January 25 revolution that ousted the regime of former President Hosni Mubarak.
In Cairo
In the state security headquarters in eastern Cairo, protestors also heard voices and managed to release 14 women and 25 men from secret cells, said Zakaria Abdul-Aziz, former head of the Judges Club.
"I called the Prosecutor General and asked him to look for the designer of the state security office so we can find others detained in the secret cells," he said in an interview with an Egyptian satellite channel.
Abdul-Aziz also aims to get the documents that were taken from the Cairo State Security headquarters to hand the classified to the army to allow the military police to take the building over until it is entrusted to the general prosecution.
According to Abdul-Aziz, secret underground cells are not only exclusive to State Security offices, but there are many others at the Ministry of Interior, prison facilities, and Central Security camps.
"We demand that the truth about secret underground cells be known now to everybody."
The size of one of these cells does not exceed a meter and a half. They are usually pitch dark, very poorly ventilated, extremely damp, and smelly, said a reporter from the Egyptian newspaper al-Youm al-Sabea, one of the five given permission by the army to take a tour in the State Security building in Lazoghli in downtown Cairo.
Like the interior minister’s office at the eastern Cairo headquarters, the offices of State Security officers are luxurious with adjacent bedrooms and fancy bathrooms.
Hell Room
The National Democratic Party, which was the ruling party before the military took over, has its Hell Room as well.
This room, former Interior Minister Habib al-Adly said, houses evidence of the violations committed by all senior officials in the country and supported by audio and video.
In the interrogation, Adly said that both Safwat al-Sharif, former speaker of the Consultative Assembly, Egypt’s higher house of parliament, and Gamal Mubarak, Hosni Mubarak’s son, were aware of the existence of this room.
Hell Room brings to mind the Capital of Hell, a book written by political activist Mohamed al-Derini. The title denotes a place in which the activist was detained for 40 days and which he cannot identify since he was blindfolded throughout this whole time.
Derini who speculates that he have been detained at the state security headquarters in eastern Cairo, said that he spent his detention time with bare feet and chained hands.
He added that he was exposed to several forms of torture like laying him down on a wet long chair then connecting his limbs to electricity and sitting him on an electrocuted chair.
(Translated from the Arabic by Sonia Farid)