Assistant Interior Minister and former Director of Minya Security Farouk Hamdan said that all police officers “are fully aware of illegal arms dealers in a number of governorates.”
“Police officers in the various police stations are fully aware of the arms dealers in Egypt’s rural areas and they know who they are,” he said.
Hamdan went on to say that the Interior Ministry’s former policy in the case of a clash between two families was to force the families to give up their weapons to the police station as a form of punishment. However, they were not arrested, but used instead by the ministry as “guides”.
Hamdan called on Interior Minister Mansour Essawi to quickly arrest the arms dealers so that the ministry can determine the source of illegal weapons in circulation.
He also called on Essawy to find and bring back the weapons that had been stolen from police stations during the revolution. Hamdan told Egyptian state television that some 4000 weapons are still in the possession of outlaws.
Ehab Youssef, a security expert and the secretary general of “People and Police for Egypt”, said he expects the number of missing weapons to reach between 20,000 to 30,000, in addition to those smuggled from the Gaza Strip, Libya and Sudan.
He went on to say that the lack of a sense of security in the nation is one reason why many people will not willingly give up their weapons to the authorities.
Translated from the Arabic Edition
