The New York Times
looks at the martyr who has become the icon of Egyptian protests:
...Mr. Said, a 28-yearold Egyptian businessman, was pulled from an Internet cafe in Alexandria last June by two plainclothes police officers, who witnesses say then beat him to death in the lobby of a residential building. Human rights advocates said he was killed because he had evidence of police corruption.
Within five days of his death, an anonymous human rights activist created a Facebook page — We Are All Khaled Said — that posted cellphone photos from the morgue of his battered and bloodied face, and YouTube videos played up contrasting pictures of him happy and smiling with the graphic images from the morgue...
It became and remains the biggest dissident Facebook page in Egypt, even as protests continue to sweep the country, with more than 473,000 users, and it has helped spread the word about the demonstrations in Egypt, which were ignited after a revolt in neighboring Tunisia toppled the government there...
Mr. Said, who was from a middle-class family and worked in the import-export business, was not an activist or involved in politics. But human rights advocates said he was killed because the local police believed he had shot a video showing officers with illegal drugs. Such a video did eventually show up on YouTube.
The police had told Mr. Said’s family that he was involved in drugs and died of asphyxiation from swallowing a package of marijuana while in police custody. But witnesses denied that account, telling their stories in YouTube videos...
“What made this case different is that Khaled Said was just an ordinary person,” said Gamal Eid, 47, a lawyer and executive director of the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information in Cairo. “He was just a guy who found evidence of corruption and he published it. Then when people learned what happened to him, when people saw pictures of his face, people got very angry.”
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