From Shuhdi Attia to Ayman Hadhoud: The Lesion on our Alley is Impunity     

Abu Zaabal prison, June 1960

They were squatting between two rows of recruits and officers. As soon as the trumpets sounded announcing the arrival of Major General Ismail Hemmat, the Undersecretary of the Prisons Authority, the fourth torture party began with clubs, whips, and submerging heads in the swamps of putrid water which filled the prison courtyard. What distinguished Shuhdi Attia was not only his height, but also his leading role in HADITU (The Democratic Movement for National Liberation), so his share of the torture was greater and harsher. From time to time, they would stop him and ask him “what’s your name, boy?” He would answer: “I am no boy, I am Shuhdi Attia,” so they would order him to say “I am a woman!” He refuses, and the torture increases, until Shuhdi Attia al-Shafei fell dead,  killed! IThe prison doctor found nothing to write in his report other than that the cause of death was a “heart failure.”

An excerpt from the eulegy by poet Fouad Haddad to Shuhdi Attia

The Lesion on our Alley is Oblivion

Towards the end of 1959, Naguib Mahfouz completed his masterpiece Children of our Alley, in which he made the famous quote: “The lesion on our alley is oblivion.”

It seems that since the July 1952 regime up to the New Republic regime in 2022, those who most lived by this quote were the security services, followed by a large part of the government and authority figures

A few months following the publication of the novel Children of our Alley, and the death of Shuhdi Attia as a result of torture, and the false cause of death in the medical report, and then the obituary that was written by his colleagues in Al-Ahram that evaded censorship because the police censor did not care about what was published on the obituaries page, Nasser was stunned during his visit to Yugoslavia as the crowds stood a minute of silence for Shuhdi.

More than sixty years after the death of Shuhdi Attia, no one has forgotten him and his death remains both a turning point and a black mark on the history of torture in Nasser’s prisons, yethis killers were not punished.

The lesion of our alley is not oblivion, but rather impunity.

The obituary of Shuhdi Attia published on the Al-Ahram obituaries page.

Pending Questions about Ayman Hadhoud

• Ayman Hadhoud is accused of attempting to steal a car.
• Ayman Hadhoud is accused of attempting to break into an apartment in Zamalek.
• Ayman Hadhoud is at the National Security headquarters in Al-Amiriya.
• Ayman Hadhoud is in the Abbasiya Mental Health Hospital by order of the public prosecution.
• Ayman Hadhoud is to be buried in a charity cemetery as an “unidentified” individual.
• Ayman Hadhoud disappeared since February 5, died on March 5, and his death was announced on April 6.
• Mohamed Anwar al-Sadat, a friend of Ayman Hadhoud and his family, knows about Ayman’s detention since February, and reassures human rights defenders and journalists that there are “serious intentions and real openness” from the authorities, which he himself described as “tangible” during his meeting with them in March.
• Mohamed Anwar al-Sadat accuses Abbasiya Hospital of neglect and demands an investigation with those responsible.

A review of AlManassa’sreport “Chronicle of the Last Hours in Ayman Hadhoud’s Life” shows the number of referrals to two mental health hospitals from police stations and the prosecution office during a single week in April 2022 to be 121 individuals. More than half of them–70 individuals!– did not have conditions that require transfer or detention in such facilities.

Are the detectives’ and National Security’s “refrigerators” so overcrowded with detainees that hospitals had to be turned into detectives and National Security refrigerators?

Ayman Hadhoud is accused of attempting to steal a car or break into an apartment. What does the National Security have to do with theft incidents?

Why was Ayman’s body kept for a month in a hospital that was not equipped for the storage of corpses for such a long period of time?

How does the public prosecution, which transferred Hadhoud to the Abbasiya Hospital in the first place, explain the intention to bury him in the charity cemetery as an unidentified individual? And why did it not explain the reasons behind its silence for a whole month after his death?

More importantly, why does the public prosecution ignore the text of the constitution that obliges it and the police to enable the accused to make a phone call to his family and relatives and to be notified “in writing” of the accusations against him?

A little while and things will calm down… A little while and people will forget

This became the slogan of the security and the prosecution ever since Naguib Mahfouz wrote his quote “The lesion of our alley is oblivion” but with some misinterpretation.

So, let’s just put Mohamed Anwar al-Sadat aside for now, and let’s ignore and obscure the news and questions related to Hadhoud. The public prosecution issues a statement that it excludes criminal suspicion in Hadhoud’s death, which occurred as a result of a chronic heart condition, which resulted in hypotensive shock and cardiac arrest. So let’s not listen to evil people and their words that stir controversy and play on emotions in order to affect others in an effort to create a state of alienation and excitement, and to disrupt public safety and peace in a way that contradicts reality and the truth.

Then we release some captives and prisoners of conscience, a bit of news about a TV series, a trend on the social media, and post-2013 human rights defenders go and sit with Omar Hadhood, Ayman’s brother, in Maadi to convince him that death is upon us all, and God willing, all will be well.

People will forget, and things will calm down.

And if people do not forget and things do not calm down, then asking questions in Egypt may throw the questioner into the clutches of pretrial detention under the pretext of spreading false news or joining a banned group or both, so what about those who ask too many questions?!

False Witnesses

In March, I attended two meetings at the invitation of Mohamed Anwar al-Sadat, a member of the National Council for Human Rights, with some members of the Council and its president. The first was on March 10, which I attended in my capacity as a representative of a human rights organization that hassuspended its activities for many reasons, the most important of which was police pressure, and thesecond was at the end of the same month, which I attended in my capacity as the owner of two websites that are also blocked by police decisions.

During the two meetings, Ayman Hadhoud’s body was lying in the mortuary refrigerator of the Abbasiya Hospital. We did not know back then that he was being held in the first place, but Sadat, his “friend”, knew at least that he was being illegally detained.

The summary of my intervention during the two meetings was; We do not ask the National Council to struggle against nor to stand up to the authorities, but only not to collude and become a false witness to violations.

Of course, Sadat was quick to stress that these meetings are not merely public relations and not for polishing the image, and that he sensed a will for change, and his words were confirmed by the President of the Council and the members present.

We are still well-meaning to the point of naivety, even to the point of foolishness.

The council was aware of Ayman’s detention, from its chairwoman Mushira Khattab, who received his family’s call for help, to Sadat, the detainee’s friend, and the head of the party to which Ayman belonged, to the rest of the members, especially the member who was chosen by the council to announce that the family had not sent an official complaint! Were they expecting a complaint with an official stamp and the testimony of two officials?!

Despite all our doubts, or my doubts, about the role and feasibility of such meetings, I went to talk and to listen, as if I were polishing the image of a pig with lipstick. And because lying has short legs, the statements of the Council, as well as those of Sadat, were worn out and scandalous, placing the burden and blame on the hospital and that’s it. “My country is strong, Hussein.”

Hassan Abu Al-Roos sings

In the movie The Beginning and the Endby the late Salah Abu Seif based on the novel by the same author of Children of Our Alley, which was screened in the same year as Shuhdi Attia’s death, Tough guy singer Hassan Abu Al-Roos decides to discipline the guests of a wedding who objected to his terrible voice and demanded he stopped this singing thuggery. The wedding ends in a brawl, nevertheless, Hassan Abu Al-Roos insisted on getting paid in full by the groom, or else!

We are compelled not only to hear the official stories of Hassan Abu al-Roos, but also to believe them, and not to ask questions or offer alternative and different accounts. Shuhdi Attia died of cardiac arrest, Khaled Said died after swallowing a packet of drugs, the Rabaa massacre in which those who had heavy weapons dropped dead by the hundreds in a few hours, and Shaima al-Sabbagh died because she was very thin, and Giulio Regeni was a spy and gay so he died and five other citizens just died with him, and Ayman Hadhoud was trying to steal an apartment and a car and died.

• Accusing Ayman Hadhoud of attempting to steal a car and break into an apartment does not explain his detention at the National Security headquarters in Amiriya.
• Hadhoud’s referral to Abbasiya Hospital by the prosecution, having knowledge of his identity, does not explain the prosecution’s subsequent issuance of a permit to bury him in a charity cemetery as an unidentified individual.
• Hadhoud was kept in the hospital’s mortuary refrigerator for a month, and his name is written down in the records, but the hospital denied his presence.
• The adherence of the police and the public prosecution to the constitution and its articles, especially the public prosecution, by granting Ayman his right to make a phone call, would have spared us a lot of ambiguities, doubts, and tales of evil people that play on emotions.

These are our questions and this is our opinion on the case.

A final paper

Ahmed Fouad Negm says in a paper from the case file:

Ok, fine.

Where is the informant?

You will change your mind by being beaten up, you will change your mind by being beaten up

**

By:

Gamal Eid