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Thanks for the tip on embedding! - and the comparison with Egypt.

I'm pretty sure that for a while, at least, the policemen will stop videotaping their assaults here too. However even if this time the police officers do get into serious trouble, I don't think that in the long term there can be any result unless there is a series of judicial decisions against violent police officers.

The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom - William Blake

by talos (mihalis at gmail dot com) on Sun Jun 17th, 2007 at 06:36:08 AM EST
[ Parent ]
I'd say that change will only come when the people higher up in the chain of command are held accountable for this as well.  Egyptian authorities routinely deny that torture and abuse are policy or even routine, and any time there has been an undeniable case of it, they claim it's an "isolated incident."  So you do occasionally see individual officers disciplined, but because the practice is systematic, and is tolerated or even encouraged by those in charge, it will not stop unless and until the people at the top really want it to, or are themselves held accountable for it.

I hope the situation isn't that bad in Greece.

Whenever any human rights groups or foreign governments issue the slightest criticism of Egypt on this issue (or anything else, really) it results in a torrent of angry statements from various government officials about how nobody has the right to interfere in Egyptian internal affairs, sovereignty, etc.  But since Greece is a member of the EU, it really is supposed to be meeting certain international standards for humane treatment of prisoners, and so hopefully the pressure to do so won't fall on such deaf ears.

One would expect that European nations would aspire to hold themselves to higher standards than Egypt....

by the stormy present (stormypresent aaaaaaat gmail etc) on Sun Jun 17th, 2007 at 07:18:10 AM EST
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