On the evening of Saturday, April 12, the family of Mahmoud Asaad announced his death in Al-Khalifa police station in Cairo, just weeks after he was arrested by officers from the same station. The family accused police officers of torturing and killing Mahmoud, citing visible signs of abuse on his body. The public prosecution has launched an investigation into the circumstances of his death. In another incident, on the far western edge of Egypt in the city of Marsa Matrouh, police forces allegedly took two young men—Youssef Eid Fadl Al-Sarhani and Farag Rabash Al-Fazari—who had voluntarily turned themselves in, to the Salloum Road and executed them extrajudicially.
These incidents raise not only questions about constitutional violations by security forces in detention facilities, but also point toward a deeper logic—namely, the state’s historical and philosophical claim to ownership over the bodies of its citizens. This relationship, particularly the security apparatus’s power over life and death, traces back to the formation of the modern Egyptian state under Muhammad Ali (1805), and the evolving relationship between political authority and the physical bodies of Egyptians.
A Complicated History Between Power and Egyptian Bodies
Since the formation of the modern Egyptian state under Muhammad Ali in 1805, the relationship between the ruling power and the Egyptian citizen’s body has fundamentally changed. Egyptians were no longer individuals acting freely within social spaces. Their lives—where they worked, how they lived, when they were imprisoned, drafted, or died—were increasingly dictated by the needs of the state.
In his book “In Quest of Justice” (p.101), Egyptian historian Khaled Fahmy explains that the creation of the modern Egyptian army marked a turning point in how state power operated. It was no longer merely about exerting force or threatening death to maintain sovereignty, but rather about managing and optimizing life itself—through surveillance, organization, and control. Modern medicine, Fahmy argues, was introduced not out of concern for public health, but to preserve the lives of new soldiers brought from Upper Egypt to serve the army—soldiers without whom Muhammad Ali could not build his modern military machine or project internal and external dominance.
This was the beginning of a state philosophy that viewed citizen bodies as state property. Supporting evidence includes the implementation of population censuses—what was then called “ta’dād al-nufus” (headcounts)—and the systematic classification of citizens based on the state’s needs. Further documentation of this dynamic comes from Fahmy’s writings on torture. He recounts the case of Sultan the Slave, who worked on the estate of Prince Ilhami Pasha in 1858. Sultan was flogged over a thousand times on orders from the stablemaster, Omar Bek, for being two days late returning to the stables. Deprived of food and water, he died. Fellow workers fled the estate and reported the abuse to the Azbakiyya police in Cairo. Omar Bek was arrested and exiled from Egypt.
This case does not reflect justice in the modern sense—banishment was hardly proportional punishment for torture and murder. Nor does it suggest that the state treated enslaved workers humanely. In fact, ordinary Egyptians accused of theft, desertion, or vagrancy were often punished by flogging, imprisonment, mutilation, or execution. Rather, it demonstrates that the assault was not just against the enslaved man, but against the state’s exclusive right to control and punish bodies. It also reveals a long history of torture, particularly against Egypt’s poor, whose bodies were historically offered up as sacrificial ground for the enactment of state and class power—under both monarchy and republic.
Torture Under the Banner of Exception
With the formation of the republic, Egypt’s state bureaucracy expanded significantly—particularly within the Ministries of Interior and Defense. Security camps, police stations, prisons, and military barracks proliferated—especially under the current president, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. Torture became routine across these institutions. It moved from being a performance enacted in palaces to one conducted within prison walls, police stations, and the halls of national security and intelligence services. While the terminology changed from “slave” to “inmate,” the treatment often mirrored that of pre-modern bondage. Today, Egyptian prisoners live in dehumanizing conditions that violate both the Egyptian constitution and international human rights treaties.
Since July 2013, when the military removed President Mohamed Morsi and Sisi took power, Egypt’s security forces have regained and intensified their use of force—power they had lost during the January 25 Revolution, especially after the mass protests and police retreat on January 28, known as Friday of Rage. That moment had symbolically and physically broken the police’s hold on public space.
Under Sisi, however, the state rebuilt the security apparatus to its most aggressive form—primarily to suppress the large-scale protests led by Islamist groups after the coup. The regime needed a powerful and violent security force to crush this opposition, and it succeeded. By 2017, peaceful protests by Islamists had been entirely eradicated, with thousands killed or injured. The state also largely defeated remaining insurgent violence by various Islamist factions, and today maintains tight control over any remaining threats.
Yet this resurgence of state violence has not been limited to political opponents. It has continued the long tradition of state abuse against Egypt’s poor and working classes—the very foundation of the 2011 uprising against Mubarak. Under Sisi, cases of death by torture in police custody have become alarmingly common. One of the most high-profile was the killing of Islam Al-Australi in Cairo’s Al-Munib district in September 2020, which sparked public protests accusing the Interior Ministry of his murder. Similar incidents—including the killing of tuk-tuk drivers by police—have been reported across the country.
In many such cases, the Ministry of Interior denies all allegations and evades accountability. The public prosecution’s response often hinges on forensic reports that determine whether death was caused by “natural” circumstances or torture. Legal proceedings then follow depending on power dynamics—who the accused is, what rank he holds, his connections, and the social class of the victim’s family.
The state does not punish killers in defense of the victim, but rather because the killer usurped its monopoly on life and death. The political authority claims exclusive control over citizens’ bodies. That is why officers responsible for the Rabaa massacre—in which hundreds of peaceful protestors were killed in a few hours—were never held accountable. Those killings were carried out under direct orders from the top of the state and justified as acts of sovereign necessity. In contrast, killings that occur without political authorization are sometimes subjected to nominal legal action—not out of justice for the victim, but to maintain state supremacy.
The Cinematic Truth
Egyptian cinema has long reflected these dynamics—especially the relationship between poor citizens and the prison/security system. In the film Ibrahim El Abyad (2007), written by Abbas Abul Hassan and directed by Marwan Hamed, a powerful line illustrates the state’s philosophy on ownership of death. In a scene where the character played by Amr Waked (Ashry) talks about his friend Ibrahim’s fearlessness in street fights, he says:
“The government will turn its back to anything—even if you split it in two… except for murder.”
This line, spoken in Egyptian dialect, reflects a truth widely understood by Egyptian society: the state may tolerate any act of bodily harm—but not murder. Not because a life was lost or a soul is sacred, but because the state believes it alone has the right to end a life. It owns the body. And if that body dies without its consent, then the killer has violated its sovereign privilege.
This opinion article does not necessarily reflect the views of Zawia3. It represents the author’s perspective.
