Egypt: Policeman sentenced to life for killing tea vendor

An Egyptian court has sentenced a policeman to life in prison for killing a man over the price of a cup of tea in a rare move for a country that suffers from a culture of impunity for security services, activists have said.

The policeman, sentenced yesterday, shot three people and killed one in a Cairo suburb a year ago after an argument unfolded when the officer refused to pay for tea.

The life sentence can be appealed, and Egyptian courts have been known to subsequently acquit offenders deemed close to the regime of President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi.

Public anger has been building over the past year due to the impunity police officers usually enjoy. Several incidents resulting in fights and protests have been recorded over the last five years since the Arab Spring, where police officers were the main focus of major discontent.

Activists have criticised widespread police brutality in Egypt, though the interior ministry says abuses are usually isolated and the incidents regularly investigated.

In February, a policeman shot dead a taxi driver in an argument over a fare, prompting hundreds of people to protest outside Cairo’s Security Directorate.

There were also riots in the city of Ismailia and the southern Nile city of Luxor over the authorities’ handling of a case in which at least three people died in police custody in one week in November last year.

Egyptian security forces have also faced heavy international criticism over the murder of Italian researcher Giulio Regeni in Cairo this year.

Initially covered up by Egypt as an accident, a subsequent investigation by the Italian authorities revealed that Regeni was tortured before he was killed and his body dumped in a Cairo suburb by Egyptian security services.