As Egypt's new Prime Minister swore in the new members of his Cabinet, the country was still reeling from a series of grisly disclosures involving the military, the dreaded security police, and the country's Coptic Christian community.
Perhaps they should not have been so outraged, because most of the brutal transgressions of the Mubarak regime have been known to practically everyone over a period of years.
Nevertheless, pro-democracy supporters were outraged by what they saw and heard and demanded that those responsible be held accountable. While most seemed to accept that these experiences are a part of the birth pangs of democracy in the post-Mubarak era, they clamored for accountability and retribution.
What has happened that has been so sensational? Three things.
First, the pro-democracy supporters who attacked numerous buildings of the Egyptian secret police -- The State Security Agency -- found secret police burning and shredding files, but were able to take away a treasure trove of undamaged files.
Various reliable news sources reported that, inside one of the buildings, large quantities of papers had been found shredded and the Army had moved in to arrest more than 40 security officers for damaging State property. Military officers who were on the scene when the protesters barged into the
State Security headquarters in Cairo and other cities tried to recover the
documents, wrangling some of them from the crowds. A senior prosecutor took possession of others.
But the pro-democracy supporters evidently got away with enough secret documents to create a dilemma for the interim military government: how to respond to now widely-seen spy files.
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