EGYPT DESCENDING INTO ANARCHY LYNCH MOB KILL TWO
A baying crowd of 3,000 people watched, with some shouting 'kill them'. Both men died
Two men - accused of stealing a motorised rickshaw - were badly beaten by vigilantes, stripped half-naked and hung by their feet in a crowded bus station in the Nile Delta.
A baying crowd of 3,000 people watched, with some shouting 'kill them'. Both men died.
Thousands of officers and low-ranking policemen have broken ranks, staging protests and waging strikes against what they say is the politicization of the force by President Mohammed Morsi and his interior minister.
Some of the striking police officers alleged the Brotherhood group was attempting to control them. The Brotherhood denies it.
Opponents of the attorney general's call for citizen arrests fear it is a prelude to the substitution of police by militias belonging to Morsi's powerful Muslim Brotherhood group and other allied Islamist groups.
The lynchings 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 scene was 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.
The state-run newspaper Ahram reported on its website that the two men 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 hanged.
Witnesses claimed the men had kidnapped a girl inside the rickshaw, but that she escaped unharmed.
A photographer who witnessed the scene told The Associated Press that some in the crowd of around 3,000 threatened to kill him if he took pictures of the lynching.
(©Daily Mail, London