Egyptian vigilantes beat two men accused of stealing a rickshaw, then
stripped them half-naked and hung them from a tree in a bus station in a
small Nile Delta town on Sunday, according to security officials who
said both men died.The killings came a week after the
attorney general's office encouraged civilians to arrest lawbreakers and
hand them over to police.It was one of the most extreme
cases of vigilantism in two years of sharp deterioration in security
following Egypt's 2011 uprising. The worsening security coupled with a
police strike prompted the attorney general's call for citizen arrests
last week.
The state-run newspaper Ahram reported on its
website that the two were dragged in the street after being caught
"red-handed" trying to steal a rickshaw. It said they were beaten but
alive before they were hung.
Photographs from the scene
show the two men lying on the ground dead in their underwear, their
bodies covered in dirt, bruises, blood and lacerations, with a group of
angry looking men gathered around them. One man in the crowd grasped a
knife in one fist and another held up a bloodied wooden stick.
Ahram
reported that police were delayed from reaching the site of the
hangings because residents had cut off the roads to protest a shortage
of diesel fuel, one of Egypt's many crises. Earlier in the day,
residents of the nearby city of Mahalla had cut off a main train track
to protest the fuel shortages.
The scenes in the town of Samanod, about 55 miles north of
Cairo, were emblematic of the chaos that is sweeping the country, mired
in protests over a range of social, economic and political problems and
with security breaking down to frightening proportions.Security
officials said those who tried to help free the two men were pushed
back by others in a crowd in the small town, which is in the Nile Delta
province of Gharabiya.
They said they are preparing for
possible blood feuds between residents of Samanod and the nearby village
of Mahallahit Ziyad, where the two men were from.The
bodies were taken to the morgue for identification, according to
security officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were
not authorized to speak to the media.Similar attacks have happened elsewhere in Egypt, though vigilante killings are not frequent.
Citizens
have grown bolder in taking matters into their own hands following the
2011 uprising that ousted longtime authoritarian ruler Hosni Mubarak.
The country's once powerful and feared police force was left weakened
after the revolt.
Egypt is embroiled in another wave of
political unrest that has also engulfed the nation's police force.
Thousands of officers and low-ranking policemen have broken ranks,
staging protests and waging strikes against what they say is the
politicization of the force by President Mohammed Morsi and his interior
minister.Some of the striking police officers allege
that the Brotherhood group is attempting to control them. The
Brotherhood denies that. Opponents of the attorney
general's call for citizen arrests fear that it is a prelude to the
substitution of police by militias belonging to Morsi's powerful Muslim
Brotherhood group and other allied Islamist groups.
Source:cbsnews.com