Egypt revolt's dead victims recalled as real people

Egypt's newspapers, Tahrir Square posters, and websites speak of friends, children, parents among the hundreds known to have died.

A man looks at placards with the pictures of the people killed, including a photo of Sally Zahran, 23, left, during the anti-government demonstrations in Tahrir Square in Cairo. Felipe Trueba STR

CAIRO // A curly-haired 23-year-old marching in her first protest. A Cairo artist and father of two young children who braved tear gas and gunfire to capture history with his video camera. A 16-year-old girl struck by an errant bullet.
The faces of some of those killed in Egypt's two-week-old uprising are beginning to emerge.
A comprehensive count is a long way off as some bereaved families hesitate to come forward and as human-rights researchers complain of intimidation by authorities. A preliminary tally of 297 dead has been compiled by one rights group, based on visits to seven hospitals in Cairo, Alexandria and Suez.
The victims are Egyptians from all parts of society, protest sympathisers say. Details of the lives lost have been recounted on websites, in newspapers and on posters put up in Cairo's Tahrir Square, the centre of the revolt that erupted on January 25.
"This gives the revolution a face," said reporter Mai el Wakil, who has begun writing a "Faces of the Fallen" column in the English-language daily Al Masry Al Youm.
The uprising began peacefully, with rallies organised via Facebook and Twitter against President Hosni Mubarak's nearly 30-year rule.
But skirmishes soon erupted between protesters and security forces. On January 28 major clashes broke out in Cairo, Alexandria, Suez and elsewhere, with police firing tear gas, rubber bullets and live rounds to break up throngs of stone-throwers. It became known as the "Friday of Anger."
Ahmed Basiony, a visual artist, musician and teacher, had been in Tahrir Square compiling a video diary, said his friend, the gallery owner Mohammed Allam.
Mr Allam said he and Basiony talked almost daily about their frustration with Egypt's problems - poverty, food prices, rampant corruption - but he was surprised by his friend's intensity after the uprising broke out. "He just needed to fight and to document," Allam, 26, said.
Late on January 28, Basiony went missing. They found his body three days later in a hospital. Doctors said he had been hit by rubber bullets and apparently struck by a car, Mr Allam said. He left behind a wife, a 6-year-old son Adam and a 1-year-old daughter Salma.
In his last Facebook post according to Al Masry Al Youm, Basiony wrote: "If they want war, we want peace. I am just trying to regain some of my nation's dignity."
Among the demonstrators in Alexandria on that Friday were 21-year-old Ahmed el Hag and his 16-year-old brother Baha. Their father, Magdy el Hag, said he didn't know his sons had joined a neighbourhood rally after Friday prayers.
When bullets began to fly, Ahmed, a recent university graduate, was among those struck. "My son got a bullet in the back and [it] went through his chest," Mr el Hag said.
Mr el Hag said he had hoped that Ahmed would become a lawyer and bring him grandchildren. His death was a "catastrophe for the whole family."
Elsewhere in Alexandria, 16-year-old Amira el Sayyed was in a friend's house when shots were fired from the roof of a nearby police station to intimidate residents and prevent them from joining protests.
"A bullet penetrated and shattered the glass of the window where my daughter and her friend sat," said the girl's father Samir el Sayyed.
He buried his daughter quietly the next day because of the chaos, but plans to join other bereaved parents to eventually sue the government.
At the other end of Egypt, in the southern district of Sohâg, 23-year-old Sally Zahran, an English-Arabic translator, joined the protests for the first time on January 28. "She felt it would be safe . So many others were going out," her friend, Ally Sobhy, told Al Masry Al Youm.
He said Zahran was not a political activist, but wanted the situation in Egypt to improve. The newspaper said the woman was beaten to death by hired pro-Mubarak thugs.
A huge photograph of Zahran, her smiling face framed by dark curls, is now on display, along with pictures of seven other victims, near a main entrance to Tahrir Square. "His blood was not spilt in vain," reads a message below some of the photos.