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.

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"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.

A man holding a knife to his neck was immobilized with a stun gun by police outside London’s Buckingham Palace during Sunday’s Changing of the Guard ceremony.

Smartphone video of the incident, published on news sites including the Daily Telegraph, showed the man being brought to the ground by the police weapon.

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He was immediately arrested and is in custody, according to a Metropolitan Police spokesman, although it is not yet clear if he will be charged with any offense.

The incident happened at 11:55 a.m. local time (6:55 a.m. ET) on the street outside the palace gates in the west end of central London.

It was witnessed by hundreds of tourists who had gathered to see the 45-minute Changing of the Guard ceremony.

The queen and her husband, Prince Philip, were at their rural home in Sandringham, Norfolk, at the time.

Buckingham Palace said it would not comment, according to ITV News.

CHICAGO - David Headley, an American who admitted scouting targets for the 2008 Islamic militant raid on Mumbai and later agreed to testify against the plotters to avoid the death penalty, was sentenced on Thursday to 35 years in prison.

The sentence, handed down by U.S. District Judge Harry Leinenweber, was the maximum sought by federal prosecutors.

The attacks killed more than 160 people, including six Americans. Headley, a 52-year-old U.S. citizen of Pakistani descent, admitted videotaping sites that were targeted by the Mumbai attackers.

He was arrested in 2009 and pleaded guilty to 12 charges, including conspiracy to bomb places of public use and commit murder and plotting an attack on a Danish newspaper.

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After entering his plea in 2010, Headley cooperated with U.S. investigators and foreign intelligence agencies to avoid the death penalty and extradition to India, Pakistan or Denmark, agreeing to testify in foreign judicial proceedings, the government said.

In a memorandum filed with Judge Leinenweber earlier this week, the government said "there is little question that life imprisonment would be an appropriate punishment for Headley's incredibly serious crimes but for the significant value provided by his immediate and extensive cooperation."

Last week, Judge Leinenweber sentenced Pakistani-born businessman Tahawwur Rana to 14 years in federal prison for providing support to the Lashkar-e-Taiba, the group blamed for the Mumbai attacks.

The militants had filled five jeeps with hostages and begun to move when Algerian government attack helicopters opened up on them, leaving four in smoking ruins. The fifth vehicle crashed, allowing an Irish hostage inside to clamber out to safety with an explosive belt still strapped around his neck.

Three days into the crisis at a natural gas plant deep in the Sahara, it remained unclear how many had perished in the faceoff between Africa's most uncompromising militant group and the region's most ruthless military.

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By Friday, around 100 of the 135 foreign workers on the site had been freed and 18 of an estimated 30 kidnappers had been slain, according to the Algerian government, still leaving a major hostage situation centered on the plant's main refinery.

The government said 12 workers, both foreign and Algerian, were confirmed dead. But the extremists have put the number at 35. And the government attack Thursday on the convoy — as pieced together from official, witness and news media accounts —suggested the death toll could go higher. The U.S. government confirmed that one of the dead was a Texan, Frederick Buttaccio.

Meanwhile, the al-Qaida-linked Masked Brigade behind the operation offered to trade two American hostages for two terrorists behind bars in the U.S., including the mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing — a deal the U.S. rejected out of hand.

The remote In Amenas plant, jointly run by BP, Norway's Statoil and Algeria's state-owned oil company, is deep in the featureless desert. The Algerian government has released few details about the continuing siege.

By Friday, however, the outlines of the takeover by Islamic militants were coming into focus. The attack had been in the works for two months, a member of the Masked Brigade told an online Mauritanian news outlet that often carries al-Qaida-related announcements. The band of attackers included militants from Algeria, Mali, Egypt, Niger, Mauritania and Canada, he said.

He said militants targeted Algeria because they expected the country to support the international effort to root out extremists in neighboring Mali.

Instead of passing through Algeria's relatively well-patrolled deserts, the attackers came in from southern Libya, where there is little central government and smugglers have long reigned supreme, according to Algeria's Interior Minister Daho Ould Kabila.

He said the attackers consisted of about 30 men armed with rocket launchers and machine guns and under the direct supervision of the Masked Brigade's founder himself, Moktar Belmoktar, a hardened, one-eyed Algerian militant who has battled the Algerian government for years and went on to build a Saharan smuggling and kidnapping empire linked to al-Qaida.

Early Wednesday morning, they crept across the border, 60 miles from the natural gas plant, and fell on a pair of buses taking foreign workers to the airport. The buses' military escort drove off the attackers in a blaze of gunfire that sent bullets zinging over the heads of the crouching workers. A Briton and an Algerian, probably a security guard, were killed.

One American killed, 2 escape in hostage crisis, U.S. officials say; two others reportedly still held

Frustrated, the militants turned to the vast gas complex, divided between the workers' living quarters and the refinery itself, and seized hostages, the Algerian government said.

The takeover soon turned into a standoff as military units from a nearby base surrounded the complex.

Algerians interviewed by French radio described militants knocking down doors in the living quarters, saying they were looking for foreigners. The foreign workers, including Americans, Britons, French, Norwegians, Romanians, Malaysians and Japanese, were separated from the Algerians and kept under close guard, wrapped with explosive belts. The Algerians for the most part were allowed to wander freely around the complex, and some were released, according to the state news agency.

Alexandre Berceaux, a Frenchman who was later rescued by Algerian soldiers, described two harrowing days of confusion hiding in his room as Algerian colleagues supplied him with food.

"I stayed hidden in my room for almost 40 hours," he told Europe 1 radio, saying he hid under the bed and didn't even realize when his ordeal was over.

The militants declared that the takeover was prompted by France's attacks on al-Qaida-linked rebels in Mali, and they demanded that the intervention end or the hostages would pay for it.

That night, Kabila, Algeria's top security official, announced that in accordance to Algeria's longstanding policy, "we reject all negotiations with the group." Despite regular elections, Algeria is run by a coterie of generals and ruling party leaders who got the country through a bloody, decade-long Islamist rebellion with brutal tactics that earned them the nickname "the eradicators."

On Thursday afternoon, Algerian military forces saw a five- jeep convoy moving from one part of the complex to another. Fearing the kidnappers were trying to make a break for it, they sent attack helicopters into action.

Irish electrician Stephen McFaul was in that convoy and made it out alive as the world exploded around him.

"Four of the jeeps were taken out and everybody in them was killed," McFaul's brother, Brian, told the Irish Times. "The jeep my brother was in crashed and my brother made break for it," with a belt of explosives strapped around his neck.

The kidnappers called the Mauritanian news service ANI to say that 35 hostages and 15 of their fighters had been killed in the bloodbath — a figure that was impossible to confirm. The kidnappers told ANI that they were just trying to consolidate hostages into a single location when the Algerians attacked.

By Thursday night, the state news agency announced that the assault was over and that special forces had secured the plant, but the next day it would emerge that they had taken only the living quarters. The hostages and their kidnappers remained ensconced in the refinery.

An international outcry mounted over the Algerians' handling of the crisis. Experts noted that this is how they have always dealt with terrorists.

"It's the Russian training for dealing with terrorism," said Matieu Guidere, a longtime expert on al-Qaida and Algeria. "The message is: We will terrorize the terrorists. ... This is clear. The life of hostages is nothing in the balance."

The Algerian government insisted it had to intervene to prevent a catastrophe.

Related:

Expert: Islamists' Algeria raid could inspire copycat attacks
Details emerge in militant takeover, rescue operation at Algeria gas field
Violence in Mali, Algeria raises fresh fear of radical Islam
US military cargo planes to help French in Mali
Algerian militant dubbed 'Mr Marlboro' raked in millions from kidnappings

 

 

Updated at 12:39 p.m. ET: FORT BRAGG, N.C. -- A former subordinate to an Army general facing sex crimes charges testified Tuesday that the general started an affair with her in Iraq and later threatened to kill her and her family if she told anyone.

The woman said she was honored at first by the attention from Brig. Gen. Jeffrey Sinclair, who she said was highly regarded. They first had sex in 2008 at a forward operating base in Iraq, she said.

"I was extremely intimidated by him. Everybody in the brigade spoke about him like he was a god," she said. NBC News and The Associated Press do not identify victims of alleged sexual assaults.

Now a captain, she testified on the second day of a military hearing at Fort Bragg on whether there was enough evidence to court-martial Sinclair on charges including forcible sodomy, wrongful sexual conduct and engaging in inappropriate relationships.

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It is a rare criminal case against a general and the details from the hearing are the first public narrative of the alleged offenses that prosecutors say involved a total of five women: four of them military subordinates and one a civilian.

The Fort Bragg-based general is accused of 26 violations of military law including forcible sodomy, wrongful sexual conduct, possessing pornography while deployed and conduct unbecoming of an officer.

Prosecutors seek death for soldier accused of Afghan massacre

Prosecutors said the alleged sexual contacts took place in Afghanistan, Iraq and Germany, as well as at military bases in the United States. Sinclair was sent home in May from Afghanistan, where he had served as a deputy commander for support, officials said. 

During testimony on Tuesday, Sinclair repeatedly rolled his eyes, sighed audibly and stared at his former aide from the defense table. She did not look at him.

The captain testified that she believed Sinclair's threats because he had gone through special forces training, knew how to kill with his hands and had a reputation as a killer in battle.

Sinclair was deputy commander in charge of logistics and support for the 82nd Airborne Division in Afghanistan before being abruptly relieved in May amid a criminal probe. He has been on special assignment since then at Fort Bragg, the sprawling post that is home to the 82nd Airborne.

Sinclair's former commanding officer, Maj. Gen. James Huggins, testified Monday that he launched the criminal investigation that led to the charges after the female captain told him Sinclair forced her to have sex.

Nearly 30 Air Force Academy cadets injured as ritual turns into 'brawl'

Huggins said that on March 19, the captain came to his office late at night in tears. She reported that she had been involved in a three-year sexual affair with Sinclair, then her direct commander and a married man. Adultery is a crime under the military code of justice.

According to Huggins, the captain said Sinclair had once forced her to perform oral sex on him, but that she also had sex willingly with her boss at Army bases in the United States and on deployments to Germany, Iraq and at the airborne division's headquarters in Afghanistan.

When she had tried to end the affair, Sinclair had threatened her and persisted in pushing for sex, according to Huggins' testimony. But she also told Huggins she finally decided to report Sinclair after finding emails exchanged with other women in his account.

The captain testified that Sinclair could be cold and demeaning to her and other women in the brigade, calling some of the other women degrading names.

She testified she told him he shouldn't talk about female officers that way.

"He said, 'He was a general and he could say whatever the (expletive) he wanted," she testified.

She said Sinclair was extremely controlling, even telling her when and where she could use the bathroom.

She described two instances where he forced her to perform oral sex. Prosecutors asked if he would have been able to determine that she did not want to participate and she responded: "Yes, I was crying."

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

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The judge in overseeing proceedings against the five men who allegedly orchestrated the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks allowed what he said was a one-time only opportunity for the key defendant, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to air his views on Wednesday.

In the divergence from ongoing pre-trial proceedings aimed at laying the ground rules for a trial at a U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba came in the third of five scheduled days of hearings.

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A transcript of Mohammed’s remarks, translated from Arabic, offer a window into the thinking of the 47-year-old Kuwaiti-born militant, who has been detained at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba since 2006. Before that he was detained in secret CIA facilities and subjected to harsh interrogation techniques, including dozens of sessions of "waterboarding":

Yes. In the name of God, most graceful, the government at the end of the argument gave you an advice. They told you any decision you're going to issue you have to keep in mind the national security and to remember that there were 3,000 people killed on September 11. And I would like to give you a similar advice.

Any decision you will take, you have to keep in mind that the government, that the government is using the definition of national security as it chooses. And this expression has a definition in the Military Commission's Rules.

We have heard the expression of national security again yesterday and today about tens of times. And everyone use this expression as he or she chooses. But legislators and legal people who deal in the legal field, they have to differentiate between the politicians' use of this word and the legal people's use of this word.

When the government feels sad for the death or killing of 3,000 people who were killed on September 11, we also should feel sorry that the American government, who is represented by General Martins and others, (has) killed thousands of people—millions.

This definition is a resilient definition, lasting. Every dictator can put on this definition as they choose, as he chooses to step on every definition in this world, every person, and every law and every constitution.

With this definitions, many can evade the rule and also can go against it. Many can kill people under the name of national security and to torture people under the name of national security and to detain children under the name of national security, underage children.

I don't want to be long, but I can say that the president can take someone and throw him in the sea under the name of national security. And so—well, he can also legislate the killings, assassinations under the name of national security, (of) American citizens.

My only advice to you, that you do not get affected by the crocodile tears. Because your blood is not made of gold and ours is made out of water. We are all human beings. Thank you.

 

The judge, Army Col. James Pohl, did not interrupt the speech, but made it clear that the speech was a one-time opportunity in the proceedings.

"Okay," said Pohl, addressing civil defense attorney David Nevin. "Just I think we need to make something clear here, is that I didn't interrupt Mr. Mohammed. He requested to make a statement to the court. But this is a one-time occurrence. If accused wish to represent themselves as attorneys, that's one issue. But no matter how heart-felt, I'm not going to again entertain personal comments of any accused about the way things are going. Do you understand what I'm saying, Mr. Nevin?"

"I understand," Nevin responded.

"I'm not pointing a finger," Pohl continued. "I want to make it very clear, I didn't interrupt him on this, but it is clear this was his personal statement of what he thought. Although he has the right to have that opinion he does not have the right to voice that opinion or any accused to stop the proceedings to give his personal observations and comments. I just want to make it clear the fact that I did not interrupt and let him finish should not be interpreted that this is an acceptable procedure of this Commission.

Mohammed and his accused co-conspirators are accused of terrorism and murder in the attacks, which killed 2,976 people. Mohammed has previously said that he was behind Sept. 11 and other terror attacks, and personally beheaded American journalist Daniel Pearl in February 2002 after the reporter was abducted in Pakistan.

The court's hearing on arguments on some two dozen motions, mainly involving secrecy and prisoner's rights, continued Thursday and were scheduled to run through Friday.

NBC News' Courtney Kube and Kari Huus contributed to this report.

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The self-professed mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks showed up to court in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, on Wednesday wearing a camouflage vest after a judge ruled that the military-style garment would not disrupt the proceedings.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was using his attire to make a political statement, which he coupled with a monologue late in the day’s proceedings to condemn what he called prosecutors "elastic" use of national security to justify its actions.

"The government uses national security as it chooses," the Arabic-speaking Mohammed said through a translator while seated at a defense table. "Many can kill people under the name of national security and torture people in the name of national security."

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Mohammed was appearing before the military commission for the third day of hearings that will set the ground rules for the trial of the 47-year-old Kuwaiti and four accused co-conspirators accused of planning and aiding hijackers who flew commercial airlines into the World Trade Center towers, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania, killing 2,976 people.

All five defendants are charged with terrorism and murder and could be sentenced to death if convicted. The trial is likely more than a year away.

Fashion statement
Mohammed, who has grown a long beard in detention and dyed it with henna, wore the vest over his traditional white tunic and turban. He and a co-defendant had sought to wear camouflage items at their May 5 arraignment, but that request was denied.

At the time, the commander of the Guantanamo Bay prison said the camouflage might make it harder for the military prison guards to gain control if necessary, suggesting the clothing could create confusion about telling the difference between prisoners and fellow troops.

Earlier coverage of the week's Guantanamo pre-trial hearings:
Tuesday: Hearings for accused Sept. 11 terror planners haggle over rights, secrecy
Monday: 9/11 mastermind, alleged accomplices return to Guantanamo court

In Tuesday’s hearing, Military Judge Army Col. James Pohl dismissed the suggestion that the more than a dozen military members in the courtroom would have any problem distinguishing the bearded defendants. But just to be sure, he specifically prohibited them from wearing any items from U.S. military uniforms.

Mohammed considers himself a prisoner of war and wanted the same right to wear a uniform as the Japanese and German troops prosecuted for war crimes after World War II, according to his lawyers.

Mohammed surprised the courtroom midway through the afternoon by raising his hand to request that the court allow him to make a statement.

Watch World News videos on NBCNews.com 

Judge Pohl said defendants are not generally permitted to comment on proceedings, but then granted his request.

"This is a one-time occurrence," Pohl told the defendant after some some back-and-forth.

"We are all human beings," Mohammed said in his brief monologue. "Your blood is not made out of gold and ours is made out of water."

He said that while Americans were sad that 3,000 people were killed on Sept. 11, the U.S. government has "killed millions of people."

He urged the judge not to be persuaded by the government's "crocodile tears," and he complained that the U.S. president can "legislate" assassinations in the name of protecting Americans.

Battle over secrecy 
Earlier Wednesday, the court resumed hearing arguments on the admissibility of testimony that includes information about the period of detention and harsh interrogation techniques employed at secret CIA prisons, before the men's transfer to Guantanamo Bay in 2006.

The government has already acknowledged some details about the secret prisons, including the fact that Mohammed was subjected to a near-drowning technique called water-boarding 183 times, but prosecutors have said that restrictions are necessary to prevent the release of information that would reveal information about intelligence sources and methods.

ACLU attorney Hina Shamsi picked up where she left off Tuesday when court adjourned, arguing that the detention information should be part of the public record.

Shamsi said the restrictions were overly broad and intended not to protect national security so much as to prevent the public from learning more details about the harsh confinement of the defendants in the CIA's prisons overseas.

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"We are aware, your honor, of no other protective order that is as radical as what the government is asking you to judicially bless here," Shamsi said.

But government prosecutor Joanna Baltes said the ACLU and other critics of the proposed rules are exaggerating the restrictions. She said the restrictions, known as protective orders, are similar to those in major terrorism cases in civilian courts.

"I think it is a very inflammatory allegation for the ACLU to come in and claim they have never seen anything like this," Baltes said.

The painstaking pre-trial hearings are intended to deal with 25 motions, many of them dealing with security rules and defendants’ rights.

On Monday, the court agreed that the defendants could not be forced to attend the pre-trial hearings.

At Wednesday’s hearings, Mohammed, who was born in Kuwait, and Ali Abdul Aziz Ali, a Pakistani, were the only two of the five who attended. Mustafa Al Hawsawi, a Saudi; and Walid Bin Attash and Ramzi Binalshibh, both from Yemen, sat this one out.

Hearings were slated to continue on Thursday morning.

The Associated Press and NBC News' Courtney Kube and Kari Huus contributed to this report.

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