A new and potentially important development in the case of Khaled Said, the 28-year-old Egyptian who died after being brutally beatenby police. The district attorney in Alexandria has now ordered two officers from Sidi Gabr police station – Mahmoud Salah Mahmoud and Awad Ismail Suliman –  to be detained for four days pending further investigations.

Meanwhile – unhelpfully for the authorities – a government forensic expert has suggested that the package of cannabis on which Said allegedly choked to death may have become lodged in his throat as a result of blows inflicted by the police.

Khaled Said's death, which has sparked street protests in both Alexandria and Cairo, is widely viewed as a consequence of the powers given to police by the semi-permanent emergency law.

The government renewed the emergency law last May but promised that in future it would be applied "solely for the purposes of countering terrorism and narcotics trafficking". On Tuesday, Human Rights Watch issued a list of 113 prisoners detained under the law who should now be released because their cases have no connection with terrorism or drugs.

Posted by Brian Whitaker, 1 July 2010.