Cairo - Egyptian vigilantes beat two men accused of stealing
a motorised rickshaw on Sunday and then hung them by their feet while some in a
watching crowd chanted "kill them!" Both men died, security officials
said.
The killings come a week after the attorney general's office
encouraged civilians to arrest lawbreakers and hand them over to police. They
are emblematic of the chaos sweeping Egypt and a security breakdown of
frightening proportions.
It was one of the most extreme cases of vigilantism in two
years of sharply deteriorating security following the 2011 uprising. Gruesome
photos circulated quickly on Facebook and other social media outlets, showing
images taken by people in the crowd of thousands who watched and recorded the
lynchings on cell phone cameras.
The killings were in the town of Samanod, about 90km north
of Cairo in the Nile Delta province of Gharbiya.
Mamdouh al-Muneer, spokesman for the Muslim Brotherhood
group in the Gharbiya governorate, told The Associated Press that the lynchings
followed a spate of rapes in the area. He said there have been a number of
incidents in the past several months of girls being abducted while leaving
school.
"Unfortunately, the police are completely out of the
picture in Gharbiya. They are not comfortable with their position, with the
president or with their role after the uprising," he said.
The Brotherhood is the country's dominant political group.
Egypt is currently mired in another wave of protests,
clashes and unrest that have plagued the country since the ouster of
authoritarian leader Hosni Mubarak in the pro-democracy uprising two years ago.
This wave of unrest has also engulfed the nation's police
force. 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, who came from the Muslim Brotherhood,
and his interior minister.
- AP