Egypt police ‘eye sniper’ turns himself in

A policeman nicknamed the “eye sniper” after he was filmed apparently aiming rubber bullets at protesters’ heads during clashes in Cairo has handed himself in for questioning, a senior police official said. The lieutenant, Mahmud al-Shinnawi, will undergo questioning by state prosecutors over his actions during clashes last week with protesters calling for an end to military rule in the country. The rights groups Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights said it had documented 60 cases of protesters with eye injuries in just one hospital. Cell phone footage circulated on the Internet showed a policeman apparently aiming at the protesters eyes down the street from the central Tahrir Square. “In his eye! It was in his eye! Bravo, my friend!” an officer is heard saying. Protesters responded by painting “Wanted” graffiti posters of Shinnawi near Tahrir Square, the epicenter of demonstrations that ousted president Hosni Mubarak in February but left the military in charge. The clashes which started on November 19 in Cairo and several other cities killed at least 42 people, mostly near Tahrir Square. Many protesters in Tahrir could be seen in the days after the protests with bandages over one of their eyes. The shooting also turned a 31-year-old dentist called Ahmed Harara into an icon of the resistance movement. He lost one eye in the revolt that toppled the 30-year regime of Hosni Mubarak in February and the other during the violence last week.