The Testimony of Hania Moheeb

MY TESTIMONY ON THE HORRIBLE SEXUAL ASSAULT I UNDERWENT ON THE EVENING OF JAN 25^TH 2013

I’d thought that the commemorating the second anniversary of the Jan 25^th revolution would be a great opportunity to revive the demands for which many people sacrificed their lives and their well being.  I started the day by going to Roxy Square in Heliopolis to join a march to the Itehadeya Palace.  The march started late and the space in front of the palace saw very low presence even after the arrival of the march.   I decided then to go to Tahrir square, the heart of the revolution, to participate in a more effective function.

The road to Tahrir was not so easy as the Black Blocs had blocked the streets leading to Tahrir and I had to make many detours till I reached Behler corridor round 5:20.  I walked to Tahrir taking Talaat Harb street and as soon as I stepped in I started feeling weird vibes.  The place was full of aggressive young men who seemed to be deliberately causing some jostling among the crowds.  I decided to try and reach to a friend who should have been on the other side of the square near Omar Makram mosque.

As soon as I reached the iron fence of the side walk in front of ‘Hardie’s, I went on taking some pictures with my mobile phone till I heard young men who were standing on the fence yelling at people to give room to an ambulance coming from Kasr El-Aini and trying to exit the square.  By instinct I would have stayed near the fence in such a situation, however I decided to move towards the garden in the center of the square and cross it to go to Omar Makram.

It was quite crowded by things worsened as a group of young men started pushing and jostling.  I shouted at them to give room to the girls and suddenly few other men, bigger in size pushed the first group away and one of them scolding me and telling me to stop shouting.  The argument took few seconds and all of a sudden I found a girl, much shorter than me but well built (I can vaguely remember her face and what she wore) grabbed me, hugged me and together with a group of girls made a tight circle around me.  I was quite puzzled as I hadn’t yet sensed the danger.  Few other seconds had passed before two men grabbed my arms attempting to snatch me from the girls’ circle claiming they wanted to help though I hadn’t asked for any help. I resisted and the girls tried to pull me back but the two men were not alone and all of a sudden I found meself surrounded with a bunch of men who tightened the circle around me separating me from everyone else. Then the horror began.

In few seconds the men who where all yelling with words that gave the impression they wanted to help me, started very quickly to use tens of hands over my body, stripping me from my clothes then violating the private parts of my body very aggressively.  I was terrified, I started screaming hysterically while struggling to move their hands away, put my clothes back in place and cling to my bag.

I was mostly paralyzed and the fact that my pants had fallen down made me unable to put me feet on the ground and walk.  They moved me back to the iron fence and as soon as we reached there they had already stolen my bag.  I held my hands high trying to tell the guys who were still standing on the fence to help me get on the other side of it.

Here the horror escalated and here came the worst part of the nightmare. I didn’t expect it but apparently the guys over the fence were part of the gang too.  I was almost naked when they kept pulling me up but my tummy leaning on the fence hindered them from pulling me over.  The others were still violating the lower part of my body and pulling me down.  But tearing me apart was not enough; one of the guys on the other side of the fence decided to grab my scarf that was wrapped around my neck making choke and almost vomit.  This torture lasted for some ten minutes before I fell on the other side of the fence in a space almost 70 cm wide between it and the brick wall of the underground staircase.

I was sitting probably on garbage and cardboard boxes but they tried to pull me up grabbing me by the armpits in order to proceed with the figure raping.  I realized I’m much better off seated so I started clinging to the fence and pulling myself downwards.

For all that time I hardly saw beyond the mass of attackers, but I guess at that point something was going on on the outer side of the fence for the number suddenly decreased.  I was seated there in an “L” shape position, a guy was holding me from the shoulders and his voice became quavered while asking the others to stop so I started wondering if he was trying to help out.  At that point there were still two guys or maybe more standing on my stretched legs.  I asked the guy behind me to send them away if he wanted to help so that I can wear my clothes.  Other voice came saying that they would take me to the ambulance.  I kept repeating that I wanted to wear my clothes and they repeatedly said they would ‘cover me’.  I can’t remember how they moved me back to the other side of the fence and to the same ambulance that was trying to find it’s way out of the square at the beginning of the scene.  I can vividly remember however that the group of me who carried me to the ambulance did not cover me as they had suggested and that the violating my private parts went on till the last second before I was thrown into the ambulance.

There was no place for me in the ambulance so they placed on the floor beside the stretcher on which there was a patient with an oxygen mask and I was given a sheet to cover myself.  I realized there was a doctor and one or two paramedics as well.  They seemed like the only human beings in the scene.  The gang that carried me got into the ambulance with me and they closed the sliding door with difficulty then the ambulance started shaking.

The doctor told the driver to go to Kasr El-Dobara then he turned around to look at me but I cracked up, and amidst the tears and screaming I pointed at the gang telling the doctor to do something as they were all violating my body.  One of them (with thick soft Indian like hair and red sweater) asked me the typical question “what brought you here?”  I almost threw my shoe towards him and I screamed cursing him and told him that the reason I’m in the square is that I don’t want that among my countrymen there would those who take money to rape women like he did.  I made it clear that I’m accusing them all and in an attempt to help me out the doctor asked them for their ids.  They refused to hand him anything so he asked them to get off the ambulance.  All of them but two got off.

The driver was not able to get to Kasr El-Dobara so the doctor told him to head to the Moneera public hospital.  I was crying my eyes out begging the doctor to help me and not leave me.  We reached El-Moneera Hospital and the doctor and the paramedics tried to tranquilize me and told me that they would leave the ambulance, close the sliding door for some minutes so that I could wear my clothes that were all scrapped.

I wore my clothes and figured out that the trousers were missing.  I wrapped the sheet around my waist and went into the hospital with them on foot.  I was received by a number of nurses of different ranks.  I asked one of them to call my husband on his mobile phone and ask him to come to the hospital without telling him what really happened.  I was a nervous wreck and neither the hospital staff nor facilities were ready to handle such a case.  They put me on a bed in the emergency hall. And they called a female gynecologist then the police officer.  The gynecologist attempted to check me in the presence of almost seven nurses which made me furious again.  When I screamed she sent them away and kept only one.  The detection was rather sloppy and the doctor coldly said she found nothing.

After she went away, the police officer came and nicely asked me about what had happened then he left the hall for minutes and came back with a memo.  He wanted me to read it and sign but I got furious once more for the very short memo merely mentioned that I had said some men committed “obscene acts” أفعال خادشة للحياء.  He told me that this memo is his business and that it’s not binding to me and added that I could go to file the police report “later” when I’d feel better.  I insisted that I wanted to make the report right away while the details are fresh in my mind.

At that time my husband came, and the senior gynecologist had also examined me, more thoroughly than his female colleague.  I couldn’t tell my husband what had happened but he learned from the police officer.  Since he had numbers of some of my friends on his phone, I asked to call one of them and get the numbers of human rights organization.  We were able to reach Hossam Bahgat of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights.  Shortly after my husband told me that Ghada Shahbandar from the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights had arrived with other two activists as well as a colleague of my husband and his wife who’s a pharmacist.

Both ladies tried to clam me down and I started feeling a bit better.  Upon learning that I hadn’t got any medication or even a glass of water at the hospital, the wife of my husband’s colleague sent him to get me a tranquilizer from her nearby pharmacy.

The officer’s attitude changed a bit and he questioned me and wrote the report in the presence of Mrs. Shahbandar.  Meanwhile my husband had sent a cleaning lady to get me juice and another to buy me a galabeya to wear.  My husband’s phone rang and he went out then came back to tell me that my phone (Samsung SIII with all my contacts as a journalist) was found and that we will meet the guy who found it after we go Kasr El-Nil police station.

We headed to the police station and the officer came along in another car to submit tPrhe report to the station.  They made me sign a document committing me to go the next morning to the Kasr El-Nil prosecutor.  The soldiers who brought me the document to sign in the car tried to convince me that it was not really necessary to go the morning after.

We went later to meet the guy who found the phone and though my husband doesn’t suspect him the guy says he witnessed the event then found the phone on the ground later but didn’t mention how he linked the phone to me: the attacked woman.

The day after we went to the Kasr El-Nil prosecutor and filed a more detailed report, in the presence of Mr. Mahoud Belal from Nazra whom we were able to contact the night before.   In the police report I had accused the two guys who stayed with me till I got into the hospital of being part of the group of attackers, but I really couldn’t proceed doing that because I can’t remember any faces so I refused to accuse them in the prosecutors’ report however the prosecutor himself did When I was asked if I wanted to undergo forensic examination I accepted and I went the day after with the remaining pieces of my clothes that I hadn’t thrown away after the attack.

I’m still feeling very bitter in spite of all the support I got especially from the human rights organizations but I can’t bare the idea that those criminal are on the loose and that they were so confident they wouldn’t be caught while they raped me.

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