All at once, four security guards descend on the two brothers, shoving them through the front doors of the Egyptian Mission to the United Nations.
Through the glass doors, the glint of a metal chain is briefly visible in one of the guard’s hands. He pulls back his arm and swings wildly at the older of the brothers. Then he does it again.
“Bring somebody,” a voice calls out urgently. “They’re beating the kids with the chain.”
The scene, captured in videos recorded by one of the brothers and an activist, unfolded on Aug. 20 at the Egyptian diplomatic outpost on East 44th Street in Manhattan. The brothers, Yasin El Sammak, 22, and Ali Elsamak, 15 — who spell their last names differently — had been on the street outside the building as part of a protest demanding that Egypt do more to allow humanitarian aid to flow into Gaza.
They had come to record the event, according to their father, Akram Elsamak. But he said they were soon confronted by the guards, who dragged them into the front lobby, beating the older brother to the ground and choking and manhandling the teenager.
New York police officers who were called to assist arrested the brothers, charging Mr. El Sammak with assault and Ali with assault and strangulation, even as the snippets of video and two separate accounts of the events do not indicate that either assaulted the guards.
According to the police, the brothers had tried to chain the doors of the mission, sparking the events. Husam Kaid, the activist behind the videos, said in an interview that in fact he had been the one who had tried to chain the doors.
This week, the Police Department said that it was still investigating the incident, adding that officers had made the arrests based on accounts from the mission guards.
Brad Weekes, a department spokesman, said that the brothers were working with the department to file an assault claim and had successfully filed a police report claiming they had been unlawfully imprisoned by the security guards. “This is still under active investigation and no one has been convicted of any crime,” Mr. Weekes said.
The violent confrontation came amid a wave of protests in recent weeks outside Egyptian Embassies in several countries by people demanding that the country do more to open the gates of the Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt, a critical alley for humanitarian aid to the enclave. The Gaza side of the crossing has been closed since Israel invaded Rafah in May 2024 and seized the crossing as part of its war with Hamas, effectively shutting out anything that comes from the Egyptian side.
The video of the incident in New York, which spread rapidly on social media, triggered immediate fury from critics who called it an act of repression by the Egyptian government on American soil.
In a statement on Thursday, Tamim Khallaf, an Egyptian foreign ministry spokesman, said the recent protests in New York and elsewhere had “nothing to do with freedom of expression” and were instead a “deliberate attempt” to obstruct diplomatic business.
The episode in New York has also shined a light on several recent cases where other foreign governments have used embassies and diplomatic outposts to crack down on dissent, both among members of their own diasporas and more broadly.
In 2017, supporters and security men for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey attacked protesters outside the Turkish ambassador’s residence in Washington, D.C., sending nine people to the hospital. More recently in New York, the Chinese government, which has a long history of stifling opposition abroad, has been accused of spying on dissidents and, according to reporting by The New York Times, its consulate in Manhattan has enlisted community groups to defeat local politicians who oppose China’s authoritarian government.
“We definitely see a trend of foreign authoritarian governments being emboldened to do things that perhaps they thought they couldn’t get away with before,” said Diego Zambrano, a professor at Stanford Law School. “There are just a lot more links with the West among a lot of foreign dictatorships, and I think it leads to a lot more of these cases.”
The events that led to the brothers’ arrest remain somewhat murky, with relatives and law enforcement officials offering differing accounts.
According to Mr. Kaid, the activist, he had come to the mission with a plan to chain its door and had asked Yasin El Sammak to record the action. Mr. El Sammak brought his brother along, Mr. Kaid said.
The altercation began when a mission guard approached Mr. El Sammak and began to yell at him, Mr. Kaid said. Soon after, another mission official grabbed Ali, the younger brother, and pinned him in a doorway, Mr. Kaid and Akram Elsamak, the brothers’ father, said.
Mr. El Sammak tried to intervene. Speaking in Arabic, he asked the guards to let his brother go and eventually crossed a barricade to reach him. In a video recording, Mr. Kaid can be heard making what appears to be a 911 call, while a guard in a black dress shirt holds the metal chain in his hand.
Moments later, the guards grabbed the brothers and hustled them 30 feet to the doors of the mission, their father said. Once inside, it was a flash of activity: Mr. El Sammak was whipped repeatedly with the chain and then brought to the floor and strangled with his kaffiyeh, his father said. Ali was in put a chokehold, but tried to wriggle free and get to his brother.
Police officers arrived seconds later and arrested the brothers, bringing them in handcuffs to the 17th Precinct and charging Mr. El Sammak with assault and Ali with assault and strangulation, the police said.
In Mr. Kaid’s video, Mr. El Sammak can be seen on the floor, putting his hands up as an officer sweeps into the building.
According to the police account, the brothers had bypassed the barricades outside the building. The police said the mission’s security personnel had told them that Ali had choked a guard and that Mr. El Sammak had begun fighting one. The guards had then brought the brothers inside and the authorities were called to assist, the police said.
Mr. Kaid, the brothers’ father and a lawyer for Mr. El Sammak all say the brothers are innocent.
“My sons did not raise their hand, did not even push nobody,” Akram Elsamak said during an interview this week. “Those kids they grew up in this country. They have right to speak,” he said. “How they can arrest two American citizens protesting peacefully?”
Mr. Elsamak said his sons were held in custody overnight and that he was prohibited from visiting them at the precinct. He didn’t see either one until after their court appearances the next day.
The arrests, and the violence that preceded it, have raised alarm in New York City. The day after the incident, Within Our Lifetime, a pro-Palestinian group that has been picketing the United Nations’ headquarters daily while officials convene there this month, announced a protest in response. In a release, the group called the situation “an escalation of repression by the Sisi regime.”
But the controversy has also taken hold in Egypt, where anger over the government’s cooperation with Israel has been building. The video from New York spread around social media in Egypt, where the government’s restrictions on political activity make protests or open calls for accountability all but impossible.
Egypt has spent much of the war trying to stomp out accusations that it is complicit in Israel’s assault on Gaza, which has horrified Egyptians and other Arabs and prompted calls from many Egyptians for their own government to do more to confront Israel.
Egypt has been a staging ground for moving aid to Gaza throughout the war. Aid officials have said that Israel’s severe restrictions on supplies, not Egyptian obstacles, have pushed Gaza into famine. But activists have demanded that the Egyptian government do more, launching a highly publicized march on Rafah this year and staging embassy protests in recent weeks.
The activism has evidently rankled Egyptian officials. State news media and prominent pro-government talk show hosts have emphasized Egypt’s role in facilitating aid deliveries and lionized Egyptian officials for trying to mediate a cease-fire between Hamas and Israel.
But in a video that circulated on Egyptian social media this month, the foreign minister, Badr Abdellaty, can be heard telling Egypt’s ambassador to the Netherlands that embassy staff members should “drag” protesters inside the embassy and “mess them up” before handing them over to the police. The Times could not independently verify the video.
In a statement, responding to questions about the incident in New York and the video, Mr. Khallaf, the Egyptian foreign ministry spokesman, did not deny the video’s legitimacy, but said the government expected its officials to keep its embassies safe.
“Just as how Egyptian authorities uphold their international legal obligations in affording security and safety to foreign embassies and their staff in Egypt, we expect nothing less for our diplomats and embassy staff abroad,” he said.
In New York, it was not immediately clear whether members of the Egyptian Mission’s security staff could face charges. Under international law, members of foreign diplomatic missions and consular posts receive certain immunities from local prosecution and law enforcement.
During Mr. El Sammak’s arraignment, the most serious charge against him was downgraded from a felony to a lower level misdemeanor, and he was released without having to pay bail, according to his family and court records.
The Manhattan district attorney’s office said it was “seeking to review additional video of the incident and speak to additional witnesses.” Mr. El Sammak’s lawyer, Jacqueline Dombroff of the Legal Aid Society, said her office was working to get the charges dismissed entirely.
The case against Ali, which is taking place in family court because he is a minor, is being reviewed, his family said. Mr. Elsamak said he had refused a diversion program for his younger son.
But for Mr. Elsamak’s family, life has “changed completely” since the arrests of his sons.
The incident, he said, had been traumatic, leaving his sons with both physical and psychological scars. Yasin El Sammak, who recently graduated from Brooklyn College and is planning to apply to nursing school, has bruises across his body and has hardly eaten since returning home. Ali has grown quiet and upset, refusing to talk about his experience.
Mr. Elsamak said he worried that the arrests would harm his sons’ futures.
“They’re not criminal. That’s the whole thing,” Mr. Elsamak said.
He added, “They went to stand in front of the embassy to open the Egyptian border, so babies and kids can have a sip of water or a piece of bread before they get killed. That shows what kind of kids I have.”
Vivian Yee and Rania Khaled contributed reporting.
Maia Coleman is a reporter for The Times covering the New York Police Department and criminal justice in the New York area.
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