The Egyptian Interior Ministry announced Sunday that it has arrested five people responsible for killing a dog with a shotgun, confirming that it has taken legal measures against them.
The Ministry said, in a statement on its official account on the “X” platform (previously Twitter) that it has revealed the circumstances behind a video clip that went viral on social media, showing some people shooting a dog in the al-Haram area in Giza.
“With the examination, the perpetrators of the incident (five people, one of whom has a criminal record) were identified and arrested, and one of them was in possession of a (cartridge gun), and by confronting them, they confessed to committing the incident because the dog bit a relative for one of them,” it explained.
The ministry’s statement added that the defendants confirmed that “the owner of the dog asked them to take the dog and get rid of it, so they got rid of it and killed it with the firearm seized as referred to, and legal measures were taken, and the Public Prosecution office took over the investigation.”
Cruelty towards stray animals is not uncommon in Egypt.
In 2015, two men were arrested after appearing in a violent video circulated on social media, where they can be seen torturing and stabbing a dog on Al-Ahram Street in Shobra al-Kheima, after tying it to a lamp post.
The mass poisoning of cats at the upscale al-Gezira Club in Zamalek in August 2014 had also provoked the anger of social media users. Many animal rights organizations had filed complaints against the club’s management over the incident.
Individual efforts are the basis of animal rescue incidents in Egypt, where environment laws are mostly not implemented, animal rights are viewed as a luxury and complaints of animal abuse are usually ignored or ridiculed by the police.
Stray cats and dogs are poisoned and shot as means of limiting their population, while animals at the zoo and pet shops are sometimes kept under inhumane conditions. The lack of animal care and environmental awareness campaigns adds to the problem of animal abuse in Egypt.
