Egypt vigilantes hang thieves in public

Egyptians surround the bodies of two men hung by their feet in a bus station after being accused of theft in Samanod, about 90 kilometers north of Cairo.

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 90 kilometres 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 authorised to speak to the media.

Similar attacks have happened elsewhere in Egypt, though vigilante killings are not frequent.

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 “Muslim Brotherhood” group .

R.S