Four instances of Egyptian police personnel or former police personnel being investigated for serious crimes emerged in local media reports this week.

Prosecutors are investigating two separate incidents in Giza Governorate in which detainees recently died in police stations, while two former police personnel are detained on charges of kidnapping and murder, and elsewhere a police officer is accused of embezzling a bank.

Local media reported that three officers from Haram Police Station were detained Monday for four days pending investigations into allegations by the family of Mahmoud Sayyed, who died in custody at the beginning of March, that he was tortured to death. Five other officers from the station were released after questioning.

Depending on their findings, prosecutors may charge the three officers with unlawfully detaining an individual, beating and physically abusing a detainee, and the death of a detainee in police custody. The officers reportedly allege that Sayyed died of natural causes.

Police held Sayyed in the station for nearly three weeks without a warrant, after accusing him of stealing jewelry from his grandmother and murdering her. Prosecutors ordered an autopsy of Sayyed’s body after his family claimed that his body bore clear signs of torture. When her son was still alive, the detainee’s mother was also detained for two days at the same station after she complained to the state-appointed National Council for Human Rights that her son was being tortured in detention.

A second detainee, 30-year-old Palestinian Waseem Mustafa Daghmash, died while in custody at the Talbiya Police Station on Sunday. The Palestinian Embassy in Cairo issued a statement on Monday that an autopsy was being conducted to determine the cause of his death.

The statement said Daghmash had been arrested several days earlier after a scuffle with civilians on Giza’s Faisal Street, but officers at the Talbiya Police Station told local media that he was arrested for theft.

Privately-owned Al-Masry Al-Youm Newspaper reported on Monday that preliminary police investigations found Daghmash died owing to respiratory complications. Officers at the police station said they called an ambulance to take him to Om al-Masriyeen Hospital, but he died upon arrival.

Palestinian news portals reported that Daghmash was found murdered in his cell. Egyptian prosecutors are investigating his death, but no police personnel have yet been remanded in custody.

On Sunday prosecutors also began investigating two former members of Egypt’s police, including a retired officer and a low-ranking policeman who was sacked from his job, for kidnapping and murdering a civilian.

Privately-owned Youm7 news portal reported that they are among six individuals involved in the kidnapping and murder of a young real estate broker named Farid Shawky al-Shehabi. It is reported that the two former police personnel were remanded into custody on prosecutors’ orders on Sunday for four days pending investigations. It was not clear how many other individuals were apprehended.

Youm7 and other local outlets report that the real estate broker was kidnapped last week as he was leaving a coffee shop in the Sixth of October City, a satellite town in the Giza Governorate. The motive for kidnapping Shehabi is not yet clear, but is reported to be money-based. Shehabi’s attempted escape was captured on video and posted on Facebook, which led police to identify the license plate of the car in which he had been abducted and to apprehend at least one of the individuals involved.

One of Shehabi’s alleged kidnappers is reported to have said that he tried to escape from the vehicle in which he had been abducted, so was struck in the back of his head with a pistol, which killed him.

Finally, privately-owned Al-Shorouk newspaper reported that a police officer from the Sharqiya Governorate’s Security Directorate was jailed on March 15 for 15 days pending investigations into embezzlement and falsification of official documents.

Citing prosecutorial sources, Al-Shorouk reported that the officer may be part of a seven-man gang involved in forging official documents to embezzle money from a bank. The newspaper said the gang used seals from several government departments to forge documents so as to embezzle of US$300,000 from bank accounts.