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Egyptians expressed anger Tuesday night over police brutality after a policeman shot three people and killed one of them after an argument about the price of a cup of tea in one of Cairo’s suburbs.
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Shortly after the shooting a crowd quickly gathered began to riot, overturning a police vehicle, a witness at the scene in the well-to-do neighborhood of Rehab, told Reuters.
"The Interior Ministry are thugs," chanted the crowd in a video sent to Reuters by the witness. Around 200 people were in the crowd, according to a Reuters estimate.
The video, one of several shared by the witness, showed a man lying still on the floor surrounded by angry onlookers.
"There are clashes between the police and locals. Security forces brought in two riot police vehicles and an armored truck and the victim's family is here and pelting them with rocks," said the witness who sent the video and who declined to be named for fear of reprisal.
"Security forces are retreating and promising justice," they said, "but the crowd is demanding police hand over the killer."
The Interior Ministry said in a statement that a policeman got into an argument with a vendor over "the price of a drink" and shot him dead, injuring two others in the process.
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A judicial source told Reuters the policeman shot the three men with an assault rifle and fled. The victim died from a bullet to the heart, the judicial source said.
Anger over perceived police excesses helped fuel the 2011 uprising that ended President Hosni Mubarak's 30-year rule,
However, following the the military takeover by Abdel-Fatah el-Sissi in 2013, the police and the military have regained their power and status as they continue unlawful killings and arrests with impunity.
Since Sissi took power in 2013, Egyptian authorities have arrested tens of thousands of people. Local rights groups documented more than 250 extrajudicial killings and more than 1,200 forced disappearances in 2015 alone.
In February, a policeman shot dead a driver in the street after an argument over a fare, prompting hundreds to protest outside the Cairo security directorate.
There were also riots in Ismailia and the southern city Luxor over the authorities' handling of at least three deaths in police custody in a single week in November.
Egyptian security forces have also faced scrutiny over the killing of Italian researcher Giulio Regeni in Cairo earlier this year.
Also just weeks after he carried out his 2013 cup against the first democratically elected President Mohamed Morsi, who is facing several death sentences, Sissi oversaw the army’s killing of more than 800 Morsi supporters who were participating in a sit-in against the coup.
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