Mubarak regime ordered excessive force, ex-police official says

A former high-ranking security official testified Thursday that forces loyal to Hosni Mubarak were ordered to use excessive force to crush protests in the early days of a revolution that would later topple the president.

The police general’s testimony said the order came from then-Interior Minister Habib Adli, an accusation that suggests the highest levels of the Mubarak government plotted the crackdown that killed more than 800 people from Jan. 25 through Feb. 11. It was unclear, however, whether Adli directly called for firing live ammunition.

The comments were a boost to the prosecution, which in recent days has been embarrassed by police witnesses who recanted earlier statements that had implicated the regime. Mubarak, who watched the proceedings from a defendant’s cage in the courtroom, is on trial for conspiracy to commit murder. Adli and six other senior Interior Ministry officials face similar charges.

Photos: Hosni Mubarak over the years

Gen. Hassan Abdel Hamid told the court that he attended a meeting with Adli and other officials Jan. 27. He said Adli ordered that the nation’s cellphone and Internet services be disrupted. Other top officials urged police officers on Cairo’s streets to drive their vehicles into demonstrators.

“The decision was to stop protesters from entering Tahrir Square, even if by using force,” said Hamid, who was Adli’s top aide until he was fired in late January for objecting to the Interior Ministry’s tactics, which were known as Plan 100.

Hamid testified that he did not hear directives to shoot protesters, but “without a doubt some officers, I don’t know whether by orders or not, provided their forces with birdshot rounds. We saw all of that on satellite channels, soldiers shooting protesters with birdshot at close range.”

He said Adli would have had to been the one to authorize the use of such excessive force, including snipers. Hamid provided the court with videos of police officers shooting protesters and running over them with security vehicles. Adli and Mubarak have denied calling for such actions.

The trial was adjourned until Sunday, when Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, the top general in the nation’s ruling military council, is scheduled to testify in closed session. Tantawi served as Mubarak’s defense minister and has been a confidant of the former president for decades.

The court is expected to question the general about a speech he gave to new police officers in May. Tantawi told them that military leaders met during the revolution to discuss the army’s response. “The whole group’s decision was, ‘No, we don’t open fire at the people.’ And that was the decision,” he said.

Civil rights lawyers representing the families of those killed argue that the general would not have made that statement unless an order had already been give to police forces to use excessive force.

jeffrey.fleishman@latimes.com

Hassan is a news assistant in The Times’ Cairo bureau.