I remember when I first heard about Khaled Said's case. I didn't take notice of the name. Mohamed Abdel Aziz, the young and brilliant Nadim lawyer, sent and internal email saying that he contacted the family of a young man in Alexandria who they claim died from torture but the police says he fell from an ambulance stretcher.

Honestly, I hoped that the police's story is correct. It was going to be another statement by the centre that will receive 300 hits and perhaps mentioned in one or two newspaper. I really wished it wouldn't be yet another family suffering a loss due to the brutality of the plague that is Egypt's police. Perhaps the family is mistaken. Will wait for more details.

Then Ayman Nour posted the photos released by the family before and after Khaled's death. This started an explosive response online. Specifically Facebook, where the We are all Khaled Said page became the nucleus. Everyone changed their profile picture to that of Khaled and joined the page (and other copycat pages).

I felt jealous about the response to Khaled Said's case. We had lots of other victims of torture who weren't dead who have gone through horrible experiences and were willing to speak about what happened to them. And others who lost relatives and the biggest exposure they got was from a small press conference in Hisham Mubarak law centre. In fact, after Khaled Said, there were others who sustained gruesome torture and didn't get the same response. We had photos of their bodies, videos of their testimonies, etc.. nothing received such response.

For more information, testimonies and videos, go to:

http://tahrirdiaries.wordpress.com/

http://against-torture.net/

AlJazeera English Inside Story aired a 25 minutes interview with psychiatrist Dr. Ahmed Okasha, Hisham Safie Eldin a former police officer and Wael Omar a film maker about torture and the relationship between people and the police.

The program showed some footage of police officers and policemen protesting in the past few days. But didn't interview anyone from El Nadim centre for rehabilitation of victims of torture, which is the only centre in Egypt that worked in psychological and medical rehabilitation of victims of torture and police violence, documented incidents of torture through tens of publications and provides legal aid n(I worked there for 3 years).

Not even anyone from any human rights organisation who may have worked with victims of torture was interviewed.

This made the program overlook many aspects of why torture is systematic in the country and didn't mention any of the reports of torture in the hands of the military police that are being reported in the past few weeks.

Dr. Okasha attributed the problems to lack of trust between people and the police due to the previous practices of the police in the past. And that some officers enjoyed the torture as a form of sadism. He also went on saying that torture is enjoyable to torturers because of opiates released in the brain and so on.

Since change from the top seems unlikely. Civil society should establish programs to reach out and provide alternative career options for current police officers who are willing to leave their jobs.

For example, they may help them transform into lawyers. NGOs may fund masters programs in different Law schools, provide them with extra tuition help, enroll them in human rights courses and help them establish small combined legal offices through grants.

Priority can be set to younger officers, ones with a publicly clean record. NGOs may also provide legal aid (or insurance) for old cases of police brutality or torture that might be raised against them after they leave the force.

Such NGO, and that's quite challenging, can transform into a self-sustainable association chaired by former officers.

The idea is to encourage officers who are not happy with the current status quo and are contemplating leaving but have limited or no options.

I think by now you might have heard of Khaled Said. The Alexandrian 28 years old who died minutes after two secret policemen approached him in an internet café sparking outrage after a photo following the autopsy was published on the internet. Two blurry photographs of a bloody disfigured head.

What happened exactly is still under investigation by the prosecution. Witnesses say he was beaten by the two secret policemen. They say they did this so violently, that they smashed his head into a marble shelf in the internet café or into an iron door outside the café or marble stairs in an entrance of the nearby building or all of the aforementioned. They add that he cried for help and said he was dying.

The police, including the ministry of interior, claim that upon seeing the two secret policemen he swallowed a small wrap of hash which made him choke and die. They say they didn't hit him. And the two policemen say he fell from the ambulance stretcher, which caused the few superficial post-mortem injuries.

The reason they approached him was first circulated that it was part of a routine ID checking and he refused to show them his ID. Another reason, we were told, that he had a video exposing the police distributing hashish among themselves. I heard the family denied that this was true today in a press conference.

The minister of interior was quick to inform us that Khaled was a suspect/convict/drug addict. A nasty guy who people shouldn't give too much attention about anyway. Kalb we mat.

Instead, people were incredibly angry. Facebook was full to the brim with all forms of digital campaigning and solidarity.

Torture is an organism that lives in the dark, it's done in secret and seems to be successful in staying as such. It's more successful in hiding when it's inexplicable. The fewer the (logical) reasons behind torture, the more your testimony will be difficult to believe and the more questions will be raised around your absence. Even from people who know you best.

This organism evolved the ability to live in the dark. From being part of the law in the middle ages to a rejected practice. So to survive, torture denies its own existence (read: torturers deny the existence of their actions) which is the best way to keep a secret and stay in the dark and avoid rejection (read: persecution/justice).

The ticking time bomb scenario is an idea that torture has spread to make itself less objectionable and thus nourishes it. Other more primitive ideas include deterrence.

Logically, asking 'why did they torture someone' implies that there can be an acceptable reasons for it to happen. Thus devoting part of our mental capacity to come up with excuses to make it less bewildering and thus less objectionable (like the ticking time bomb scenario). It's our nature, it's how our brain works. It tries to make sense out of things. This creates, unknowingly, a crack in our morality for torture to inhabit.

Do people ask why someone was infected with Polio? There is how, but the answer for why Polio isn't really an answer; it's either God or bad luck. People ask why HIV and got mixed up with how and created the stigma. Well you can ask Polio for why it picked someone to infect and the honest answer will be to self-propagate. The same thing with torture, any reason given is for self-preservation. I know this sounds absurd, but torture tries to propagate itself.