A recent string of cases involving police abuse against citizens has stirred an uproar in Egypt against the Ministry of Interior, which is responsible for police and security matters. Calls for reform most recently re-emerged after the May 1 police raid on the Press Syndicate in Cairo.

A review of other abuses perpetrated in the past few months reveals that most of those cases were personally motivated and not related to official law enforcement. One widely covered incident occurred April 19, when a dispute erupted between a policeman and a drink vendor over the price of a cup of tea. The policeman opened fire on three vendors, killing one and wounding the other two in the east Cairo residential neighborhood of Rehab City.

Concern about abuse by police has caught the media's attention. On the evening of April 27, Egyptian news websites reported that, during a dispute, a policeman allegedly shot a bus driver in the El-Nozha area of east Cairo. Investigations by the prosecutor general later determined that the aggressor was not an ordinary policeman but a captain in the Directorate General for Information and Documentation.

According to Al-Youm Al-Sabeh newspaper, an eyewitness testified to investigators that “fear about a repeat of the Rehab incident … led them to intervene and disarm the police officer after he shot the bus driver in the thigh.” That police officer was released May 9 after he made peace with the family involved. He had been charged with attempted murder, but said he never intended to shoot the driver.