© Photograph: Nameer Galal/Demotix/CorbisEgyptian protesters at the funeral of Mohamed el-Guindy, who is said to have been beaten and strangled by police.
An Egyptian protester has died after allegedly being beaten and strangled for four days by police, just days after another high-profile case of alleged police brutality, strengthening fears among the opposition that Egypt's new democratically elected government has as little respect for human rights as the dictatorship it replaced.
According to official hospital records, Mohamed el-Guindy died on Monday as a result of injuries sustained in a car crash. But activists allege that Guindy, a 28-year-old activist arrested following protests in Tahrir Square on 27 January, was left in a coma by police after officers took him to a police camp, strangled him with a cord and beat him until his ribs and jaw cracked - before abandoning him at a hospital in central Cairo on 31 January.
"You couldn't recognise his face from a photograph, it was so swollen," said Islam Khalifa, a human rights lawyer investigating Guindy's death, who visited him in hospital before he died. "It was horrible."
According to Hossam Bahgat, the director of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, Guindy even suffered injuries to his tongue.
The case has drawn comparisons with that of Khaled Said, an opposition activist tortured and killed under Hosni Mubarak, whose death was a contributing factor to the protests that led to the 2011 revolution.
Guindy's case follows that of Hamada Saber, a 50-year-old labourer who was filmed being stripped naked, dragged across a road and beaten by eight riot police during protests outside Cairo's presidential palace on Friday.
The president, Mohamed Morsi, has announced an investigation into Guindy's death, and the interior minister has personally apologised for Saber's treatment.
But the two cases have renewed concerns that Morsi - who became Egypt's first democratically elected president in June - is not serious about police reform, a key demand of the 2011 revolution that toppled Mubarak. No police officer has been punished for the deaths of around 800 protesters killed during the uprising.
"When it comes to human rights, things have gone from bad to worse," argued Khalifa, a member of the Protest Defence Group, a voluntary organisation that campaigns for the rights of protesters. "We reckon this is one of a pattern to make an example of protesters and to break the spirit of the people."
Khalifa also fears that there may be more protesters being tortured. "Mohamed el-Guindy's case is the one in the public eye, but there may be hundreds more inside these camps," he said.
Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood itself suffered years of police repression before coming to power, while Morsi was elected last June on a platform of police accountability, a process that his allies argue will take time.
But human rights campaigners say that Morsi has so far shown little desire to follow through on his electoral promises - perhaps through a desire to avoid a police mutiny. Since the fall of Mubarak, the police force has at times failed to maintain a presence on the streets, while it is understood that members of the Freedom and Justice party - the political wing of the Muslim Brotherhood - feel that the police are reluctant to protect them against attack.
Hundreds of people attended Guindy's funeral on Monday at a mosque near Tahrir Square, and mourners later clashed with police as the funeral procession moved down the banks of the Nile.
Guindy was arrested during a week of civil unrest sparked by protests against Morsi's presidency that left nearly 60 dead and more than 1,000 injured across Egypt.
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