Amr Nabil / AP

Egyptian relatives of Mohammed el-Gindy, a 28-year-old activist, who died early Monday protest the government during el-Gindy's funeral procession in Cairo on Monday. A medical report said el-Gindy's body showed marks of electrical shocks on his tongue, wire marks around his neck, smashed ribs, a broken skull and a brain hemorrhaging.

CAIRO — The video outraged Egyptians, showing riot police strip and beat a middle-aged man and drag him across the pavement as they cracked down on protesters. The follow-up was even more startling: In his first comments afterward, the man insisted the police were just trying to help him.

Hamada Saber's initial account, given over the weekend as he lay in a police-run hospital, has raised accusations that police officials intimidated or bribed him in a clumsy attempt to cover up the incident, which was captured by Associated Press footage widely shown on Egyptian TV.

"He was terrified. He was scared to speak," Saber's son Ahmed told The AP on Monday, explaining his father's account. Saber himself recanted his story on Sunday after his own family pushed him to tell the truth and acknowledged that the police beat him.

The incident has fueled an outcry that security forces, which were notorious for corruption, torture and abuse under Hosni Mubarak, have not changed in the nearly two years since his ouster. Activists now accuse Mubarak's Islamist successor, Mohammed Morsi, of cultivating the same culture of abuse as police crack down on his opponents.

The outcry was further heightened Monday by the apparent torture-death of an activist, who colleagues said was taken by police from a Tahrir Square protest on Jan. 27 and held at a Cairo security base known as Red Mountain. Mohammed el-Gindy's body showed marks of electrical shocks on his tongue, wire marks around his neck, smashed ribs, a broken skull and a brain hemorrhage, according to a medical report.

Blatant abuses by security forces under Mubarak were one factor that fueled the 2011 revolt against his rule. The highly public nature of the new cases put new pressure on Morsi, who hails from the Muslim Brotherhood, which was long repressed by security forces, to hold security officials responsible for any abuses.

Egypt's presidency said it is following up on the death of el-Gindy, adding that there will be "no return to violations of citizens' rights."

The Interior Ministry denied on Monday that el-Gindy was ever held by police. Morsi met Monday with top police officials, but the state newspaper Al-Ahram said his talks did not touch on the beating of Saber or el-Gindy's death. The paper said Morsi told officers he understands they operate under "extreme pressures" in the face of protests and that he would work for a political resolution to ease unrest.

Morsi's administration has said it is determined to stop what it calls violent protests that causing instability.

Morsi's prime minister, Hesham Kandil, indirectly warned the opposition and media not to raise public outcry against security officials. "This should not be used as a match to set fire to the nation ... to demolish the police," he said.

Interior Minister Mohammed Ibrahim warned that if police "collapse" Egypt will become "a militia state like some neighboring nations."

During Friday's clashes, Saber, a 48-year-old who works as a wall plasterer, was beaten.

Footage shows him writhing naked in the street. Black-clad riot police yank his pants around his ankles, kick him with their heavy black boots and lean over to hit him with batons. They drag him by the legs across the pavement and bundle him into a police van.

But in interviews with Egyptian television from a police hospital the next day, a smiling Saber said it was protesters who had shot him in the leg with birdshot, then stripped and beat him. He said the riot police were only trying to help him afterward.

He even blamed himself for any rough police treatment, saying that in his confusion he was resisting them.

"I was afraid ...  They were telling me: We swear to God we will not harm you, don't be afraid," Saber said, adding, "I was being very tiresome to the police."

His wife also praised the police, telling state TV, "they are giving him good treatment" at the police hospital.

But his children said he was forced to give the story.

"There are pressures on my mother to say that he is fine," his daughter Randa told independent Dream TV. "The government is the one pressing him."

In a statement, the Interior Ministry voiced its "regret" about the assault and vowed to investigate.

But Interior Minister Ibrahim echoed Saber's account and said initial investigation results showed it was protesters who stripped and beat Saber. He said riot police found Saber and tried to get him into the van — "though the way they did it was excessive."

'My whole body was smashed'
On Sunday, Saber told investigators that it was indeed police who beat and stripped him. Speaking to Al-Hayat TV, he said he gave his initial account because was afraid, then broke down in tears as he recounted begging the policemen for mercy.

"But no one gave me mercy," he wept. "My whole body was smashed." He has now been moved to a civilian hospital.

Rights activists say police intimidation of victims and their families to prevent complaints was rife under Mubarak and continues unabated. In a report last month, the Egyptian Initiative For Personal Rights documented 16 cases of police violence in which 11 people were killed and 10 tortured in police stations. Three died under torture during the first four months after Morsi took office on June 30, it said.

The rights group said officers increasingly act "like a gang taking revenge."

In one case it documented, police in the Nile Delta town of Meet Ghamr stormed a cafe and beat up patrons in September. When one woman who was beaten went to the police station to complain, the man accompanying her was arrested and tortured to death, the report said.

The sister of the slain man told AP that her brother's widow was paid the equivalent of around $25,000 to say that he was killed by a rock to his head during a protest.

"The main issue is that nothing has changed about the police. No change about accountability. There is just as much impunity as there was under Mubarak," said Heba Morayef of Human Rights Watch. The past two years "we've seen an increase in the police's likelihood to use lethal force ...  in the context of regular policing activities."

In the case of el-Gindy, the activist who died Monday, fellow activists say he disappeared during the Jan. 27 Tahrir protest and they later learned from people who left the Red Mountain security camp that he was being held there. Soon after, el-Gindy was brought to a hospital in a coma and on Monday he died.

After his burial Monday in his hometown of Tanta in the Nile Delta, angry mourners marched on police headquarters and clashes erupted, with protesters throwing firebombs and stones and police firing back with tear gas.

Natalia Kolesnikova / AFP - Getty Images, file

Maria Alekhina and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova sit in a glass-walled cage in a Moscow court last October.

MOSCOW — One of two jailed members of the Russian punk rock band Pussy Riot said she received death threats and complained of abuse at a prison colony where she is serving a two-year sentence for a protest against President Vladimir Putin in Moscow's main cathedral.

But Maria Alyokhina and fellow group member Nadezhda Tolokonnikova said they did not regret the protest, despite describing harsh prison conditions in interviews published on Wednesday by the opposition-leaning Novaya Gazeta newspaper.

Alyokhina, 24, who lost an appeal this month to have her sentence deferred to care for her 5-year-old son, said she was transferred to solitary confinement in November after being threatened by inmates she suspects of acting on the orders of prison officials.

"(They said) if you stay in this unit — that's the end of you. ... Human rights are grossly violated here," said Alyokhina, who is being held at a penal colony in the Ural Mountains region of Perm.

"What is the most difficult thing? Coming to understand how this system works, how it creates a slave mentality," she said. "Ignorance, cowardice, betrayal, denunciation is the norm."

Tolokonnikova, 23, who also has a young child and is jailed in the central Russian region of Mordovia, renowned for its legacy of Soviet-era prison camps, said she has not been a victim of the same pressure as Alyokhina but described pitiless conditions of forced labor.

Like many female inmates in Russia, she works to fulfill quotas for sewing padded winter jackets, earning a salary of less than $12 per month, she said.

Both women, who were inspired by leftist philosophy to form the radical punk performance art group, complained of not having enough access to books in jail.

Three Pussy Riot members — who until their arrest hid their identities and that of other bandmates behind trademark colored balaclavas at impromptu street performances -- were convicted of hooliganism motivated by religious hatred.

One of the three was released on appeal with a suspended sentence but Alyokhina and Tolokonnikova are less than halfway through their prison terms, which are counted from their arrests in March 2012.

Pussy Riot's raucous "punk prayer", the women flashing legs clad in brightly colored tights and brandishing an electric guitar on the altar, was criticized by Putin and cast by the Russian Orthodox Church as part of a concerted attack on the country's main faith.

The two jailed women complained that their message, part of a wave of opposition protests against Putin's decision to return for a third Kremlin term since 2000, has been twisted by Russian media.

"Russian state propaganda presented us as blasphemers, as hooligans and so on, but in reality it was an ironic and funny action, though still a desperate one," Tolokonnikova said.

"It was, so to speak, a political heartfelt cry which was still made in an ironic and funny manner."

Related:

Russian court bans 'extremist' Pussy Riot video from websites

Lawyer: Band members sent to far-flung prisons

Full Russia coverage from NBC News

W. Khan / EPA

Tahir-ul Qadri, with white cap, greets Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, head of coaltion party Pakistan Muslim League Quaid on Thursday after successfully negotiating an end to the four-day Islamabad protest he ignited.

Seemingly overnight, the moderate Islamic cleric and Canadian émigré Tahir-ul Qadri, whose massive protest forced Pakistan’s government to agree to major concessions on Thursday, has risen from obscurity to become a force to be reckoned with in Pakistani politics.

Until this week, local TV anchors and headlines did not scream his name, as they do now. His face was not plastered on rickshaws and lampposts, nor on signs carried by the 50,000 people who followed him to a sit-in, camp-out, anti-government protest in the cold and rainy streets of Islamabad, where they remain, celebrating his negotiated agreement with government representatives.

But the 62-year-old Qadri landed squarely at the center of Pakistan's latest political crisis, which saw a population desperate for change and frustrated by leaders long-accused of corruption and ineptitude seize upon his message of free, fair elections and accountability at the highest levels.

Qadri, who only returned to his homeland in late 2012, had demanded the immediate dissolution of the current government and sweeping reforms to guarantee free and fair national elections, which are expected to be held this spring. He agreed to something less in Thursday's declaration, signed after hours-long, closed-door discussions with government representatives. The deal calls for the dissolution of the current government before March 16, with elections to take place within 90 days, and a pledge to enforce Pakistan's Constitution regarding the eligibility of political candidates. 

Despite denying having any political ambitions, Qadri made himself a part of the political process by stipulating in the declaration that meetings to discuss Pakistan's Election Commission make-up would be held at his office's headquarters and that his own political party -- the Pakistan Awami Tehreek -- would help select a caretaker prime minister. 

Lahore-based defense analyst Hasan Askari Rizvi said that Qadri fell short of his aims.

"His assessment was that as he raises populist demands, other groups and parties will fall in line and he will become the undisputed and popular leader of Pakistan. This did not happen," Rizvi said. "However, the federal government in Islamabad has become hostage, because he has brought huge number of his followers to Islamabad, making it impossible for the government to take any action against him."

Still, for a country built on a feudal mentality, where political loyalties are handed down over generations like family heirlooms, Qadri’s accomplishments are no small feat.

So how did he do it? One former government official, who attended a Qadri rally this week, heard him address the crowd, and spoke to those in attendance, called that "the million dollar question."

"This chap .. he comes here and he holds a huge public meeting in Lahore, which is very well organized and very well-attended, and then this enormous march to Islamabad?" wondered the official, who spoke with NBC News on condition of anonymity. "How did this happen? Who's supporting him? It's a mystery to me." 

Professor C. Christine Fair, who teaches at Georgetown University and studies Pakistan, calls Qadri's sudden emergence on the national stage "theater,” and suspects the country’s powerful military helped to engineer the cleric’s return and organize his massive protest.

"If this came out of civil society, he'd be universally lauded,” she said. “The reason he's not is that a lot of people think he's got an invisible hand behind him. This isn't Pakistani civil society saying enough is enough. It's something else."

*********

For the last seven years, Qadri has by all accounts led a quiet life in Toronto, where he immigrated with his wife and children. But he'd made a name for himself in certain Pakistani circles much earlier. 

In the mid-1980s, early in the presidential tenure of Gen. Zia-ul-Haq, the young Qadri was already a known quantity in the corridors of power.

According to a former government official, Qadri was one of a handful of Islamic scholars called in to present his views on how a proper Islamic state should function to Zia -- who came to power in 1977 in a military coup and launched the Islamization of Pakistan -- and his cabinet. Whether or not his input was used is unclear, but he left an impression -- that of a confident, moderate, articulate young scholar who was incredibly knowledgeable on Islam. 

His early political career in Pakistan, however, was brief and largely forgettable. He founded the Pakistan Awami Tehreek (PAT) political party in 1989, listing education as its top priority and promising to revive "the faith of the masses in politics, elections and the government." Qadri briefly held office as a member of parliament during the military dictatorship of Gen. Pervez Musharraf, from 2002 until he resigned in protest in 2004. One local report at the time quoted him as saying that Musharraf had reduced parliament's power to "a rubber stamp." 

"I don't feel that I should sit in such a powerless parliament which can be suspended with a single stroke of a general's pen," he told Pakistan's Daily Times at the time. 

But after leaving the political arena, Qadri succeeded in developing an international network and loyal following in religious and social circles. In 1981, he established an organization called Minaj-ul-Quran International (MQI), founded to promote "true Islamic teachings and philosophy" for those "dissatisfied with the existing religious institutions and organizations and their narrow-minded approach," according to the group's website. 

The MQI manifesto espouses, "Love, peace, harmony, universal brotherhood, justice, equity and prosperity," and boasts a registered membership of 280,000 worldwide. The organization claims to be operating in more than 90 countries, including operating 69 educational and cultural centers in Pakistan, and 600 schools educating 170,000 students across the country. A social welfare and disaster relief sister organization was added in 1989, which the website says has delivered aid to victims of "the Tsunami affecting Indonesia; the Bam earthquake, Iran; the South Asian earthquake in Pakistan, as well as various developments and educational projects in Pakistan and other underprivileged countries."

Pakistan's envoy to US faces potentially deadly blasphemy charge

After founding MQI, Qadri appears to have spent years trying to be heard and cultivating his public image. He wrote books (1,000 of them, according to his website, of which 43 have been published), delivered lectures (5,000 total, 1,500 of which are available for purchase on CD or DVD at MQI sale centers "around the world"). His message and achievements are cross-published and highlighted on multiple websites, including those of his Islamic organization, his political party and his personal site. 

But it wasn't until March 2010 that he strode onto the international stage. Qadri wrote and published a 500-page “fatwa,” or Islamic decree, "to place the Islamic stance on terrorism precisely in its proper perspective before the Western and Islamic worlds." The document, which is available for download in four different languages, lays out Quranic laws prohibiting terrorism and the killing of others in the name of Islam. At the time, nine years into the West's "War on Terror," his unequivocal language condemning terrorist acts set him apart from most Muslim scholars, and the world took note. His fatwa won praise from the U.S. State Department, drew international news coverage and made Qadri a sought-after speaker on the international circuit. 

In November 2010, he came to Washington, D.C., and delivered a lecture at Georgetown University's Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding. He spoke at the United States Institute of Peace that same month about the struggle against radicalism in Islam. He traveled to England and Australia to discuss terrorism and integration. But back in Pakistan -- where gas prices ballooned, power shortages proliferated and terrorism intensified -- Qadri remained a non-player. 

*********

But while he enjoyed success in his adopted country, Qadri's home country was in precipitous decline. 

The International Monetary Fund last year issued a dismal report on Pakistan's deteriorating economy, citing "deep seated and structural problems and weak macroeconomic policies" that have led to low GDP growth and a drain of foreign exchange reserves. Terrorist attacks have killed tens of thousands of Pakistanis and left the country teetering on the precipice of security chaos. A 2012 Gallup survey revealed President Asif Ali Zardari's performance ratings had plummeted and that 87 percent of Pakistanis believed the country was headed in the wrong direction. Power struggles between the military, judiciary and ruling government persisted, preventing legislators hell bent on maintaining their posts from turning their full attention to the nation's needs. 

Many thought the answer to the country's ills lay with former cricketer-turned-presidential-candidate Imran Khan. His self-proclaimed "tsunami" of supporters, inspired by his reputation as an outsider determined to change the system, set attendance records at his rallies, and gave Pakistan's notoriously rough-and-tumble journalists someone to cast as the political dark horse. But the candidate of change lost some of his shine in the Fall of 2012, when he began cherry-picking senior members of the same political parties he was criticizing for his leadership team. One senior adviser, Shireen Mazari, resigned from his party in protest in September. In her resignation letter, she accused Khan of trading his original ideals for “traditional ‘electables.’”

For a country seeking salvation, Qadri, free from the confines of political process, checks the boxes that others in the current cast of characters in Pakistani politics cannot. 

Asif Hassan / AFP - Getty Images

Supporters of Pakistani Muslim cleric Tahir-ul Qadri flash victory signs in Islamabad Thursday as they celebrate government concessions on upcoming elections.

"Who are the other people to be supported?" asked one former government official, who also spoke on condition of anonymity. "They are maybe not as incompetent and corrupt (as the current government leaders), but they are very good runners-up."

Qadri's message, on the other hand, has been simple and consistent. 

He has demanded free, fair and transparent elections in a country where political patronage is often bought. He's demanded that political candidates meet the constitutional requirements for candidacy, such as paying their taxes. A recent investigation by Pakistani journalist Umar Cheema found that fewer than one-third of Pakistan's members of parliament file annual tax returns, including president Zardari. 

Rizvi says Qadri's support is borne of "widespread alienation" in Pakistan, and is in reaction to the poor performance by the federal and provincial governments. 

PhotoBlog: Declaring victory from behind bulletproof glass

But professor Fair believes Qadri's quick rise has all the hallmarks of Pakistan's powerful military, which has historically worked to influence policy and force political turnover -- both behind the scenes and through direct intervention. Though the military leadership has publicly taken a backseat during power struggles playing out before national elections, she believes it is privately pulling strings to prevent the same government officials from winning a majority, and to keep its hand in the game.

"They know that Pakistanis will not tolerate a direct military intervention. And this is (going to be) the second peaceful transition where parliament serves out its full term in Pakistan," Fair said of the military leaders. "Every time it happens, it makes it more difficult for the army to intervene. I don't think the intention is to overthrow the government -- it's to weaken the PPP (ruling party) before elections."

In an interview this week with NBC News, Qadri lambasted the current government as a "total failure," but insisted his goal was to reform, not topple it.

"We want to eradicate our political process and electoral process from might, money and manipulation," he said. "We want true democracy in place.”

He vehemently denied any support from Pakistan's military, or from external forces, as has been speculated in the local press, calling it "a false accusation," and "disinformation."

Now that he has the ear of the country and its leaders, it's unclear what Qadri will do next. 

Under the agreement signed Thursday, he has a role to play in the lead-up to elections. And while he insists he holds no political ambitions, that doesn't stop him from comparing himself to the elected-leader of the United States when asked what he stands for.

"I would say my slogan is like the slogan of Obama in America," he said. "He stood for change. If Americans accepted the slogan of change and voted for him, why not the same change? Democratically formed, the change in the corrupt system, why not the same change, democratically, peacefully should come in Pakistan?” 

NBC's Wajahat S. Khan and Fakhar Rehman in Islamabad, and Mushtaq Yousafzai in Peshawar, contributed to this report.

More from Open Channel:

• US asks Turkey, Jordan to secure chem weapons if Syria crisis worsens
• Obama plan eases freeze on CDC gun violence research
• Guns already allowed in schools with little restriction in many states

Follow Open Channel from NBCNews.com on Twitter and Facebook 

Kirill Kudryavtsev / AFP - Getty Images

At least 20,000 people rallied Sunday on the Boulevard Ring in Moscow to oppose Vladimir Putin's law banning American adoptions of Russian children.

Thousands of people marched through Moscow on Sunday to protest Russia's new law banning Americans from adopting Russian children, a far bigger number than expected in a sign that outrage over the ban has breathed some life into the dispirited anti-Kremlin opposition movement.

Shouting "shame on the scum," protesters carried posters of President Vladimir Putin and members of Russia's parliament who overwhelmingly voted for the law last month. Up to 20,000 took part in the demonstration on a frigid, gray afternoon. 

The adoption ban has stoked the anger of the same middle-class, urban professionals who swelled the protest ranks last winter, when more than 100,000 people turned out for rallies to demand free elections and an end to Putin's 12 years in power. Since Putin began a third presidential term in May, the protests have flagged as the opposition leaders have struggled to provide direction and capitalize on the broad discontent. 

Opponents of the adoption ban argue it victimizes children to make a political point. Eager to take advantage of this anger, the anti-Kremlin opposition has played the ban as further evidence that Putin and his parliament have lost the moral right to rule Russia. 

The Kremlin, however, has used the adoption controversy to further its efforts to discredit the opposition as unpatriotic and in the pay of the Americans. 

UNICEF estimates there are about 740,000 children not in parental custody in Russia, while about 18,000 Russians are on the waiting list to adopt a child. Since the law banning American adoptions was passed, Russian political and religious leaders have been encouraging Russians to adopt more children.

Adoption of little brother caught in US-Russia spat

Sunday's march may prove only a blip on what promises to be a long road for the protest movement, especially in the face of Kremlin efforts to stifle dissent. But it was a reunion of what has become known as Moscow's creative class, whose sarcastic wit was once again on display on Sunday. 

"Parliament deputies to orphanages, Putin to an old people's home," read one poster. Another showed Putin with the words "For a Russia without Herod." 

Putin's critics have likened him to King Herod, who ruled at the time of Jesus Christ's birth and who the Bible says ordered the massacre of Jewish children to avoid being supplanted by the newborn king of the Jews. 

Russia's adoption ban was retaliation for a new U.S. law targeting Russians accused of human rights abuses. It also addresses long-brewing resentment in Russia over the 60,000 Russian children who have been adopted by Americans in the past two decades, 19 of whom have died. 

Cases of Russian children dying or suffering abuse at the hands of their American adoptive parents have been widely publicized in Russia, and the law banning adoptions was called the Dima Yakovlev bill after a toddler who died in 2008 when he was left in a car for hours in broiling heat. 

"Yes, there are cases when they are abused and killed, but they are rare," said Sergei Udaltsov, who heads a leftist opposition group. "Concrete measures should be taken (to punish those responsible), but our government decided to act differently and sacrifice children's fates for its political ambitions." 

Those opposed to the adoption ban accuse Putin's government of stoking anti-American sentiments in Russian society in an effort to solidify support among its base, the working-class Russians who live in small cities and towns and who get their news mainly from Kremlin-controlled television. 

Putin has turned his back on the new Internet generation in Moscow and other large cities, exacerbating a divide in Russian society that seems likely only to deepen in coming years. 

Protests against the adoption ban were held Sunday in a number of other Russian cities, but in most places only a few dozen people took part. In St. Petersburg, about 1,000 people turned out to show their opposition to the law and to Putin. Some held up a poster that read "Don't play politics using children." 

At the end of the protest, marchers dumped the posters of Putin and parliament members in an industrial-sized trash container that had "for disposal" scribbled on it. 

Sunday's protest had been authorized by the city government, which contributed to the high turnout. 

Just ahead of the weekend demonstration, Putin's spokesman sought to ease anger over the adoption ban by announcing that some of the dozens of adoptions already under way could go forward, allowing children who have already bonded with American adoptive parents to leave the country.  

More world stories from NBC News:

• 150 years old and still running late: London Tube reaches landmark
• Family escapes 'tornadoes of fire' by clinging to jetty for 3 hours
• Video: How happy is the only country to track happiness?

Follow World News from NBCNews.com on Twitter and Facebook