The family of a 60-year-old man who died during clashes with the police east of Cairo on Tuesday rejected the official narrative of what went on in their neighborhood.
According to preliminary police reports, 16 police cars were destroyed and 17 policemen wounded during clashes with residents of Cairo’s Ezbet el-Haggana district on Tuesday. The clashes erupted after a bulldozer demolished a house in the area that had been slated for demolition by the local municipal council, injuring a young girl.
Subsequent official investigations alleged that police had not used teargas to disperse demonstrators. The police officials also claimed that the death of local resident Ismail Abdel Meguid on the same day had been "unrelated" to the incident, noting that Abdel Meguid had died inside his home from a diabetes coma. Prosecutors, therefore, ordered his burial without autopsy.
Abdel Meguid’s wife, however, denies that her husband died as a result of diabetes.
"He died from shock when 16 policemen stormed in and told him they had orders to demolish his home," she said, "even though he had attempted to show them documents proving that the house had been built legally."
"My father spent all that he had building this house for us to live in," said Abdel Meguid’s son, Abdel Aziz. "We’ve been living here for 37 years."
Abdel Meguid’s daughter, Zakeya, said her father had recently bought a graveyard in his hometown in the Nile Delta province of Gharbiya. "It seems that he knew he was going to die," she said.
Translated from the Arabic Edition.
