After highlighting husband's arrest, detained Dina Ezzat accuses police of assault

Egyptian prosecutors are investigating allegations that police officers assaulted Dina Ezzat after she complained that they unlawfully arrested her husband, took his money and goods, and threatened him, according to two members of her legal team who spoke to Al Manassa.

The New Cairo Prosecution took over the case after Nasr City Prosecution spent 11 hours questioning Ezzat and members of the security force involved in arresting her husband, Youssef Abdel Samee. The investigation is expected to include medical reports documenting bruises she said she suffered on her arms, legs and back after officers allegedly beat her inside the police station.

The Nasr City Prosecution summoned Ezzat on Tuesday to question her over accusations of publishing false information, and also questioned the security officers involved in the arrest. Ezzat told prosecutors that the heads of criminal investigations at Nasr City First and Third police stations, along with a Nasr City investigations inspector, assaulted her after she arrived at the station, according to Mustafa Gamal, one of three lawyers representing her. Prosecutors adjourned the questioning until Wednesday pending medical reports.

Gamal said the prosecution did not ignore Ezzat’s allegations against the criminal investigations officers. Instead, it opened a separate investigation into her claims of assault and injury, requesting medical reports needed to document the claims.

Another member of her legal team, Mustafa Ghareeb, stated that the case file was transferred Wednesday morning from Nasr City Prosecution to the New Cairo Prosecution, which will continue the investigation after referring Ezzat to a government hospital for medical examination.

Ghareeb previously posted on Facebook that the Public Prosecution was investigating with “full transparency and impartiality,” adding, “We know and commend the integrity of the judiciary and prosecution.”

The investigation began hours after Ezzat posted a series of videos, including one in which she accused an investigations officer and police personnel at Nasr City First Police Station of threatening her for 54 days because her husband, Youssef, who works as a ride-hailing driver and sells goods from a street stall on Abbas El-Akkad Street, refused to work as an informant for one of them.

Ezzat filed a complaint after security forces from Nasr City First Police Station raided and searched her home without a judicial warrant and arrested her husband, Youssef, on allegations of drug dealing. She also accused officers of “seizing money and gold jewelry belonging to them.”

While the Interior Ministry quickly denied her account and maintained her husband was caught in possession of drugs, Al Manassa obtained copies of the investigation papers and arrest records that reveal significant gaps and contradictions in the ministry’s account. At the same time, Al Manassa documented an organized online campaign aimed at discrediting Ezzat politically and personally.

Extortion and threats

Ezzat said a police officer routinely extorted her husband, taking cash and goods from him. Then security forces, in a private car, stopped him outside the International Garden, seizing his motorcycle, 2,500 Egyptian pounds ($46), and his cellphone, demanding a larger payment after learning he had sold the car he used for work.

In another video, Ezzat said officers first took Youssef to his mother’s home, then forced her to accompany them to the couple’s apartment, where they entered using a key taken from her handcuffed husband. She said the officer insulted her when she asked to see a search warrant.

Ezzat accused the officers of ransacking the apartment and taking 330,000 pounds ($6,400), the proceeds from selling the car and some of her jewelry, which the couple had planned to use as a down payment on an apartment.

She said she secretly recorded part of the raid on a cellphone hidden in her clothes, saying, “I filmed the money in the officer’s hand.” During the raid, the officer knocked her to the ground and beat her to take the phone after discovering the recording, prompting her to flee into the street and seek refuge in a shop, she said.

She said officers threatened her husband that they would arrest her if she published the videos, prompting her to file a formal complaint with the Interior Ministry’s Inspection and Oversight Sector.

The Interior Ministry denied Ezzat’s allegations of extortion, illegal search, and theft. The ministry said the incident dated to July 26, when a security patrol stopped her husband, described as a street vendor, “caught in the act of smoking hashish and in possession of a quantity of it and weapons” within the jurisdiction of Nasr City First Police Station.

Youssef’s story

Ezzat’s account and her videos, one of which captures her pleading, “Leave the money,” are consistent with her husband’s statements to prosecutors. Youssef denied possessing drugs or weapons and denied using the nickname “Youssef the Syrian.” He said he was arrested around midnight outside the shoe stall where he worked on Abbas El-Akkad Street.

According to case documents obtained by Al Manassa, he said officers took him to search his mother’s home, then raided his wife’s apartment and seized her gold jewelry and 330,000 pounds. He stressed that the only items seized from him personally were his cellphone and 2,500 pounds.

According to the case documents, prosecutors questioned the investigating officer about several procedural gaps, including a discrepancy between the amount of money recorded in the police report and the amount found when the evidence package was opened. The officer failed to identify any of the young buyers to whom he alleged Youssef had sold drugs, and the case file contained no conclusive laboratory report establishing the nature of the seized substances.

According to the official records, the case began with a report filed by an investigations officer at Nasr City First Police Station, stating that he had received confidential information that a person known as “Youssef the Syrian” was selling drugs inside the International Garden using an unlicensed motorcycle.

The officer justified arresting Youssef without a warrant by citing “lack of time and fear of escape.” He claimed Youssef was caught in the act while smoking a hashish cigarette on the evening of July 25 inside the garden, and that drugs, including hashish and crystal meth, cash, a bladed weapon, and a taser were found on him.

“Caught in the act” in violation of the Constitution

The Interior Ministry’s statement did not address the details of prosecutors’ questioning of the officer. Instead, it repeated the claim that the suspect had admitted to drug use and dealing, voluntarily directing security forces to his home, where crystal meth and hashish, cash, and a bladed weapon were allegedly found. Prosecutors then ordered him held in pretrial detention.

The ministry portrayed Ezzat’s videos as an attempt to “cast doubt on the procedures used to arrest her husband and enable him to benefit from that in court.”

Lawyer and former MP Zyad El-Elaimy said doubts over the search are justified, as the ministry relied on a Criminal Procedure Law provision ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Constitutional Court 42 years ago, rendering the operation unlawful.

El-Elaimy told Al Manassa that the Interior Ministry statement had “several problems,” including the officers’ apparent belief that catching Youssef in the act allowed them to search his home. Officers relied on Article 47 of the Criminal Procedure Law to justify entering without a warrant, ignoring that the provision was invalidated decades ago. 

The Supreme Constitutional Court ruled Article 47 unconstitutional in July 1984, enshrining the sanctity of the home. The court established that police cannot search a residence without a reasoned judicial warrant, even when a suspect is caught in the act.

El-Elaimy noted that officers should have filed an information-gathering report with prosecutors to request a warrant following the suspect’s alleged confession. Searching the apartment independently rendered the operation completely unlawful, he said.

El-Elaimy, a founding member of the Egyptian Social Democratic Party who spent more than three years in prison after being convicted of “spreading false news” in the high-profile Hope Cell case between 2019 and 2022, criticized what he described as turning the complainant into a suspect. “The Interior Ministry should have investigated the woman’s allegations, which were documented in the videos, rather than arresting her as a suspect,” he said.

Invoking the Muslim Brotherhood and hostility toward refugees

Al Manassa also documented an organized online campaign targeting Ezzat and her husband, beginning with attempts to discredit her complaint and extending to attacks on her reputation and suggestions that she belonged to the Muslim Brotherhood. The campaign also claimed that her husband was Syrian based on his nickname, “Youssef the Syrian,” and insulted people who expressed support for the couple, describing them as paid online operatives.

A sample of Facebook posts showed a recurring pattern combining calls for absolute trust in the police account, and therefore rejection of the wife’s account, with identical texts and images of the husband circulated across different pages and accounts.

Among the most prominent were a Facebook page and a group called “Friends of the Egyptian Police,” as well as “Union of State Supporters” and “Show Me in Arabic.” The latter posted photos of her husband under the caption “switchblade, liquor and thuggery.” The “Egypt for Egyptians” page, which has previously led similar campaigns targeting refugees, described him as “the criminal drug dealer” and called for Ezzat to be arrested as his accomplice. Other posts relied on claims about the husband’s Syrian nationality to broaden the attack.

The campaign took a political turn when a Facebook user named Menna El-Habashy wrote that “all of Dina Ezzat’s leanings are Brotherhood-oriented and all her posts support the Brotherhood,” attaching personal photos of the couple and widely circulated compilations about them.

Another Facebook user, Engy Ali, described the incident as the work of “American and Brotherhood online cells and Gulf trolls,” then published several posts that were subsequently cited by other accounts. 

Hanan El-Gamal invoked the memory of Khaled Said, writing, “We cannot rule out ‘We are all Khaled Said’, but this time we are all Dina Ezzat,” and linked sympathy for Ezzat to an alleged attempt to “bring down states.” A search found the same wording repeated in more than one post.

Khaled Said was killed in June 2010 by two police officers, sparking widespread anger after the Interior Ministry tried to defend them by claiming that the Alexandrian man had died after swallowing a packet of marijuana. His death is widely regarded as one of the central sparks of the January 25 Revolution.