Egypt's hated police protest to restore honour

CAIRO: Egyptian troops fired warning shots and scuffles broke out as policemen protested Sunday to restore their reputation after they found themselves on the wrong side of the country's anti-regime revolt.

One policeman's teeth were smashed in during a clash with soldiers outside the interior ministry, where around 400 members of the force demanded pay rises and called for former interior minister Habib al-Adly to be executed.

Army troops had fired over the heads of the protesters, some of whom were in police uniform, as the crowd chanted at their former boss: "Habib, you know you will be executed in the public square!"

Egypt's police are broadly despised and seen as a brutal and corrupt force, while the military has been embraced by the protesters who forced president Hosni Mubarak out of office on Friday.

But the police protesting on Sunday insisted that they had been ordered to deal harshly with the protests by Mubarak's security services, and argued that they were underpaid by their corrupt government masters.

"We are not traitors," they chanted. Rank-and-file officer Mustapha Abdulsader told AFP at the scene: "Our brothers were at the protests."

Outside the interior ministry the military brought in a tank and an armoured personnel carrier to reinforce their positions. Another police protest was held outside a police station in Cairo's Dokki district.

Another group of policemen, one bearing a bunch of flowers, tried to show solidarity with the remaining anti-regime protesters occupying Tahrir Square, but they were rebuffed amid scuffles and insults.

When the uprising to Mubarak's rule broke out last month police launched a harsh crackdown, then withdrew the force from the streets altogether, triggering looting and vigilantism.

State security forces arrested dissidents and journalists, and there were credible and widespread reports of torture.

When pro-government thugs launched a deadly attack on the protest on January 28, many detected the hand of police in plain clothes.

In all, around 300 people are thought to have been killed in the uprising.

Order was restored when the army took charge and police have been slow to return to the streets since Mubarak quit.

Those protesting on Sunday, however, insisted that they were acting under orders and complained that they are underpaid by an officer class that itself enjoyed many perks under the former regime.

"I've worked in the police force for seven years and I make only 664 pounds ($112) a month and I've got two kids, how can I support them" said Mohammed Ramadan.

"The senior officers get all sorts of perks. When they get sick there are special hospitals, but when we seek treatment they treat us like dogs."

Egypt's state prosecutor has banned former interior minister Habib al-Adly from travelling and frozen his assets, amid widespread complaints of graft and human rights abuses at his ministry.

The state news agency MENA said the asset freeze applied to Adly was linked to the transfer of some four million Egyptian pounds ($675,000, 500,000 euros) from a private contractor to his personal account.

But rank-and-file police grievances are unlikely to win a sympathetic ear among the protesters who had to brave beatings, shootings and torture during their campaign to topple the Mubarak regime.