Tuesday, February 8, 2011

Egypt: 'Symbolic' funeral of journalist killed by police today

Egypt: 'Symbolic' funeral of journalist killed by police today
Journalists mourn the first journalist to be killed and the 300 other martyrs during the Egyptian revolt and attack press syndicate chairman
Ahram Online, Monday 7 Feb 2011

On Friday 29 January journalist Ahmed Mahmoud was taking photos of the bloody clashes between protesters and police officers from the window of his publishing house in Maglis El-Shaab Street.

It did not take long before a police officer saw him and ordered him to stop and go inside. Mahmoud complied and stopped filming but the police officer went ahead and fired at Mahmoud before he was able to go inside.

The bullet hit Mahmoud in his right eye, entering the brain and causing a hemorrhage. Mahmoud died on 4 February.

The shooting was seen by seven eyewitnesses who recorded the shooting on their mobile cameras.

Mahmoud’s colleagues in the publishing house, immediately called the ambulance but were questioned about the nature of the wound. They claim that when they told the phone operator that it was a bullet wound they refused to send an ambulance. Instead Mahmoud was taken to the hospital by his colleagues and admitted to the intensive care ward after falling into a coma.

A symbolic funeral was held today in front of the press syndicate.The funeral, attended by Mahmoud's wife, daughter and father ended in a show of anger against state media and the press syndicate chairman Makram Mohamed Ahmed. Mahmoud was a journalist in Al-Ahram’s Tawan weekly newspaper.

“Down with Makram, and down with the state media,” chanted journalists while Ahmed was giving a TV interview.

The funeral, attended by approximately a thousand journalists, marched from the syndicate's headquarters downtown to Tahrir Sqaure where Mahmoud's wife, journalist Inas Abdel Aleem who works for Al-Akhbar, gave a speech and a prayer was held to mourn the loss of more than three hundred protesters who died during the revolt.

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