GUC students detained for four days pending investigations

Three students at the German University in Cairo were ordered to be detained for four days pending investigations, after being accused of assaulting the university’s president and security in events that ensued following the death of a student who was fatally crushed by university buses last March.

GUC students had staged a sit-in following Yara Negm’s death, protesting against the administration’s negligence in the incident, and called for a series of new safety measures. Negm was crushed between two student buses and bled to death before the university ambulance arrived at the scene.

A video had circulated at the time showing an altercation between some students and GUC’s president as they surrounded his car for a few minutes. 

Ten students had originally been summoned by the prosecution, but only Hazem Abdel Khalek, student union head, Karim Naguib, deputy student head, and Alaa al-Attar had turned themselves in, according to Ahmed Bayea, student union member.

Bayea told Mada Masr that Abdel Khalek wasn’t even at the scene when students confronted the president in his car and that Naguib was the one who instructed students to form a cordon around the car and told them not to touch it.

According to the student, the university is demanding that the students issue an apology for them to drop the charges against them.

“It is clear that they are just seeking revenge,” he said.

Last March, students had present a list of demands including holding those responsible for student security accountable for Negm’s death, overhauling the campus parking lot, installing sensors in the buses and stationing ambulances around campus.

According to Bayea, the sit-in was suspended after the students reached an agreement with the university and some of their demands were met.

“The parking lots were changed, among other things,” he said, “We were actually making progress.”

Osama al-Mahdy, a lawyer who attended the interrogation of the students, finds the decision to detain the students strange, saying that the prosecution is being “unusually adamant,” since the charges leveled against the students do not warrant detention.

He said that there is a clear bias towards one side and against the other.

Mahdy told Mada Masr that the students are charged with vandalism, because they broke the university president’s car emblem, verbally assaulted him and held him in his car for 10 minutes.

“These don’t even qualify as crimes,” he said, explaining that these charges do not require detention pending investigation.

“Even if they were convicted,” he explained, “They would be required to pay a fine.”

Mahdy, however, said that the students will be back at the prosecution tomorrow and that he expects them to be released.