About a thousand people, many of them political activists, took part in the Alexandria funeral. A protest to denounce Khaled Said’s murder was also organized in Cairo by the April 6 Youth Movement, among other groups and activists. My hopes for justice were rising steadily. I asked the page members to join the protest, which was planned to take place outside the Ministry of Interior. But the security forces were prepared and decisive: they arrested many protesters and surrounded the rest with double their number of police officers, nearly making a perfect circle. From afar — as later seen in a photograph — the image was quite symbolic. It perfectly represented what the regime was doing to our country. Worse yet, the media, under the usual pressure from State Security, ignored the protest. As with many past examples of human rights abuses, the public was kept in the dark.
The media’s suppression of the physical world made the virtual world a critical alternative for promoting the cause. On the Facebook page, I began to focus on the notion that what had happened to Khaled was happening on a daily basis, in different ways, to people we never heard about. Torture is both systematic and methodical at the Ministry of Interior, I said. One of my most significant resources was the “Egyptian Conscience” blog, Misr Digital, by Wael Abbas. From 2005 to 2008, Wael Abbas actively published every torture document, image, or video that he received from anonymous sources. He was arrested several times by State Security, yet he and other brave bloggers continued to expose the horrifying violations of human rights that were taking place in Egypt.
I apologize for posting pictures of torture cases, but I swear that I had not seen most of them before. It seems I lived on another planet … A planet where I went to work in the morning and watched soccer games and sat at cafés with friends at night … And I used to think people who discussed politics had nothing better to do … But I am appalled to see a terrifying Egypt that I never knew existed … But by God, we will change it!
I posted links to other torture videos, which were numerous and easy to find. One of them that I published on the page was removed from YouTube, I noticed, because it violated that site’s content policies. Many users had reported it as an inappropriate and gruesome video. I did not try to use my employment at Google to resist this decision in any way; my activism had to remain independent of my job.
Meanwhile, although the official press remained utterly silent about Khaled Said’s case, the Ministry of Interior began to worry about the controversy. The authorities’ first line of defense: stain Khaled’s reputation. In an unprecedented public statement, the Ministry of Interior declared that the cause of Khaled’s death was not torture but rather asphyxiation, the result of swallowing a pack of marijuana. They said the facial deformation that appeared in the widely circulated photograph was the result of an autopsy. They claimed that Khaled Said had been wanted for four different crimes: drug-dealing, illegal possession of a weapon, sexual harassment, and evasion of military service. As a main player in the state-led defamation campaign, the state-owned Al-Gomhouriya newspaper then labeled Khaled Said “the Martyr of Marijuana,” a satirical reference to the activists’ name for him, “the Martyr of the Emergency Law.”
The circumstances of Khaled Said’s death were mysterious. According to eyewitnesses, he was sitting at an Internet café when two informers attacked and beat him severely. They then dragged him to the entrance of a nearby building, where they continued to pound him until he died. The official police account alleged that he had tried to hide a pack of marijuana by swallowing it, and that he choked and died while the informers were trying to force him to spit out the pack.
The ministry’s expected support of the secret police officers’ story, along with the defamation campaign launched against Khaled, exemplified its approach in addressing its problems: never admit guilt, even by a low-level officer. The very limited number of officers who were ever convicted in cases of torture generally returned to work as soon as their prison sentences came to an end.
In response to the ministry’s statement, Khaled Said’s mother spoke to the independent newspaper Al-Shorouk and dropped a bomb: she speculated that her son was murdered for possessing a video showing a local police officer and his secret police colleagues examining and then allegedly dividing confiscated drugs and money. Soon this video, which was allegedly found on Khaled Said’s cell phone, spread on Facebook. Many of those who shared it presented it as the reason behind his death. His friends claimed that Khaled had gotten this video by hacking into an informer’s cell phone. The video showed a police officer and a few others posing in front of a pile of marijuana and carrying some cash. The officer counted the number of people present and then counted the money and was seemingly about to divide it.
I quickly posted the video, presenting it as a potential explanation for the violence inflicted on Khaled. Yet members responded with disapproval, arguing that my accusations were not supported by clear evidence. I removed the video and posted an apology. It is true that I was quick to accuse the police, and that the officer’s actions in the video could have been interpreted differently. The page’s members thanked me for seeking the truth and not rushing to defame the police force. Nonetheless, the video spread widely on the Internet and was seen by more than 200,000 users in a few days.
Meanwhile, Khaled Said’s family went public with a copy of the military service certificate that proved that he had completed his compulsory service, directly countering an allegation made by the Ministry of Interior. I published the certificate on the Facebook page, as well as videos of three eyewitness accounts of Khaled’s murder. One of the witnesses was the Internet café owner, who said that the two secret police officers stormed the place and viciously attacked Khaled. He said he tried to interfere but that only increased their brutality. He also asserted that he did not see Khaled insert anything in his mouth. The second video featured a young boy who saw the beating and testified that others saw it as well but were too afraid to interfere. Finally, the third witness was the porter of the building where Khaled was brutally beaten. He described the viciousness of the violence and said that the officers beat Khaled’s head against the stairs while he yelled, “I will die!” But his cries did not deter them in any way. The porter said Khaled lost consciousness and might have died at that point. The ambulance arrived minutes later to carry his body away, without any interference from the residents.
Large numbers of new members were joining “Kullena Khaled Said” at unusually fast rates. The page did not belong to any specific patron, and I was careful not to use it for the benefit of any particular political cause, even the seven-demands petition. “Kullena Khaled Said” spoke the language of the Internet generation. The tone on the page was always decent and nonconfrontational. The page relied on the ongoing contributions of its members and established itself as the voice of those who despised the deterioration of Egypt, particularly as far as human rights were concerned.
Together, we wanted justice for Khaled Said and we wanted to put an end to torture. And social networking offered us an easy means to meet as the proactive, critical youth that we were. It also enabled us to defy the fears associated with voicing opposition. The virtual world seemed further from the oppressive reach of the regime, and therefore many were encouraged to speak up. The more difficult task remained, though, which was to transfer the struggle from the virtual world to the real one.
I was skeptical about supporting demonstrations, since the first one had had a disappointingly low turnout and had met with such a determined police crackdown. Though many activists had perceived it as a success — since it challenged the might of the ministry — I knew that average young Egyptians, such as the members of the Facebook page, would be easily demoralized if they were treated in a similar manner. Being an activist himself, AbdelRahman Mansour didn’t necessarily share that view, but we eventually agreed that it was important not to put our members at any risk whatsoever. So we chose instead to identify online activities that we could promote, to instill a sense of optimism and confidence that we could make a difference, even if only in the virtual world for the time being.
The first campaign I