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Destruction of records in Egypt and Tunisia
The International Council on Archives Human Rights Working Group, March 2011 newsletter contains worrying information about the destruction of records, which might have included incriminatory evidence against the ousted regimes in Egypt and Tunisia.
The destruction of records in Egypt
Throughout the month the press reported on the files of the Egyptian state security services.
On 3 March ikhwanweb.com reported that the former head of state security admitted that he had ordered security personnel to destroy state security files “which contained incriminating evidence.”
Four days later the Almasyalyoum English edition website eported that the General Prosecutor had launched investigations into 64 state security employees on “charges of attempting to destroy important papers and documents.”
The destruction was far from complete, however. Many news outlets including the Washington Post and the New York Times ran stories on the 5 March storming of the headquarters of State Security Investigations and the discovery of “thousands of potentially inflammatory documents,” in the words of the Washington Post.
Some documents were quickly posted online. On March 22 the BBC reported that a fire broke out in a building in the interior ministry compound that housed the personnel department and its records; this was the same building that police set on fire in February.
By month’s end, the Washington Post reports, German officials were in Cairo offering Egypt advice on dealing with the secret police files.
The destruction of records in Tunisia
As in Egypt, the uprising in Tunisia was accompanied by the destruction of administrative documents and by the public circulation of documents taken from police posts.
“The unassuming whitewashed building is crammed full of explosive material potentially more damaging, or vital, to Tunisia’s democratic experiment than any incendiary device. The structure is not an armory packed with weapons. It houses the long-secret archives of the country’s once-dreaded Interior Ministry”. From an article published online on the Los Angeles Times website.
Source: The International Council on Archives Human Rights Working Group, March 2011 newsletter
