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THE EGYPTIAN REVOLUTION BEGAN ON JANUARY 25, 2011-"POLICE Day"-a public holiday that commemorates the role of the police in the resistance against the British occupation in Egypt. It started as a day of protest called for by a number of youth groups and activists, among them "April Sixth" and the Facebook group "Kulina Khaled Said" ("We are all Khaled Said"). The organizers of the protests on that day wanted to subvert the celebration of the police and turn the day into an occasion to indict the institution in charge of policing-in a sense, putting it on public trial. Primary among the objectives of the organizers was the removal of General Habib al-Adli, the then-minister of the interior, who had been in that position for 14 years and under whose leadership the ministry came to represent the most feared and despised apparatus of government. The ministry has been associated with routinized violent practices against civilians held in police stations, including torture and sexual violation, the internment of political dissidents by its state security organs, the surveillance of activists, the rigging of elections, and the protection of core ruling regime interests.
The case of Khaled Said concerned an incident of police brutality in Alexandria in June 2010. Said, a young man, was dragged out of an Internet café by two undercover police officers and was violently beaten to death while in police custody. The incident was emblematic of a mode of operation on the part of police that threatened the integrity of life for ordinary citizens. To understand the strength of the feelings surrounding this case and its powerful role in mobilizing youth against the police, we should take a broader look at the background of anti-police sentiment to see that for large segments of the population, engagement in the uprising was an expression of opposition against the police as an institution of everyday government, which operated throughout the social body and infiltrated the nooks and crannies of society.
To grasp the character of the police in Egypt, we need to consider the police not only as an organization in charge of public security, but as an agency of government in the broad sense. In terms of areas of remit and rationalities of government, the Egyptian police...