Police detained and held Heba Raouf, political sciences professor at Cairo University, for five hours in al-Khalifa police station, after they mistook the logo for Egyptian Volunteer Day, which features multiple handprints in different colors, for the Rabaa Al-Adaweya sign.
Doaa Hany, Chair of the Simulation of Egyptian National Child Rights Observatory (SENCRO), said that when they were approached by an officer, they failed to convince the officer that the logo was not the Rabaa sign. “We tried to explain the issue, but he was not convinced. A huge number of policemen and national security agency personnel arrived shortly.”
“When security arrived, they took the participants out of the citadel and held them at the gate. Heba Raouf was taken to al-Qalaa police station for half an hour then she was taken to al-Khalifa police station to complete the investigations,” Hany added.
Hany, along with the Student Union of Cario University's Economy and Political Sciences Faculty, release the details of the arrest on Saturday.
“SENCRO’s t-shirt for last year, which was worn by the group members today, had children’s hands in different colors, including a yellow one. Policemen thought that the Rabaa sign was on the t-shirts, although there were different colors and the hand was five-fingered, though there was no sign for four fingers. They canceled the event and detained some students, an engineering professor and Heba Raouf, which was coming to deliver a speech,” the student union said in a statement.
Egyptian Volunteer Day, which was Saturday, was held at the Salah Eddin al-Ayouby citadel, where multiple NGOs and students took part in activities. The student union said that organizers had completed all required permissions to hold the events and SENCRO was just one of many participants.
Others in the past have been punished in the past for flashing the Rabaa sign, which is signaling the number four with one's hand in memory of the dispersal of Rabaa al-Adaweya square protests, where over 800 were killed by the Egyptian army after rejecting multi-party negotiations with the Muslim Brotherhood to withdraw their protesters and ordering soldiers to storm the square.
