State Security Investigations Service The Egyptian State Security Investigations Service ( SSI ) ( Arabic : , Transliteration : ) was the highest national internal security authority in Egypt . Estimated to employ 100 , 000 people , the SSI was the main security and intelligence apparatus of Egypt ' s Ministry of Interior . The SSI focused on monitoring underground networks of radical Islamists and probably planted agents in those organizations and had the role of controlling opposition groups , both armed groups and those engaged in peaceful opposition to the government . Following the 2011 Egyptian revolution , the head of the SSI was arrested under suspicion of ordering the killings of demonstrators . On March 15 , 2011 , the Ministry of the Interior announced the dissolution of the agency . The service was replaced by the Egyptian Homeland Security . History . Originally formed in 1913 as the Intelligence wing of the National Police , the service was reformed and reorganized following the Nasserite Coup of 1952 to suit the security concerns of the new socialist regime . The State Security apparatus was made a separate branch of the Interior Ministry , separate from the regular Police command , and was focused intensively on political threats to the State ' s security , particularly those emanating from Islamist , Liberal or far - Left opposition sources . The State Security was made independent of the Police Command and given legal powers of arrest , detention , and prosecution . Separate State Security Courts were set up tp prosecute detainees arrested by the SSIS , separately from the regular prosecution judiciary . After 1954 - 55 , when relations between Egypt and the Soviet Union drastically improved , the SSIS was intensively trained by the Soviet State Security apparatus on political suppression , infiltration , public surveillance , public intimidation , and coercive interrogation . State Security officers were sent to the Soviet Union to undergo training under the KGB . After 1963 , Egyptian State Security officers were sent to Algeria , Syria , Yemen and Iraq to train the newly formed state security agencies of the Baathist and nationalist regimes of those countries . In the 1960s , the SSIS forged new ties with the State Security apparatus of East Germany , which took SSIS competence against political subversion to a new level . Recruits were carefully screened and selected on the basis of political reliability , and practising Muslims were virtually barred during the Nasser era . During the Sadat and Mubarak eras , the agency continued its focus on radical Islamists but eased up on the suppression of the Liberal opposition . The SSIS excelled in planting moles and infiltrators within Islamist groups , a practice that would later be carried out with ruthless efficiency by the agency ' s trainees in Algeria and Syria . Torture was rampantly used during interrogation . The agency is regarded as professionally competent and capable by Western counter - terror agencies . Organization . The SSI is a branch of the Interior Ministry in Egypt with an official aim of protecting the security of Egypt . The SSI has many official bureaus that provide its public face : an " Investigative Bureau " in the Lazoghli section of Cairo , a " Supreme State Security Court " in Giza , a " Supreme State Security Prosecution " ( " Niyabat Amn al - Dawl a al - ' Ulya " ) , etc . A diplomatic cable sent in 2007 published by " The Daily Telegraph " as part of the leak of classified US diplomatic cables discussed what the then SSI head called the " excellent and strong " cooperation between the SSI and the United States FBI . The cable also discussed the benefit the SSI derived from training opportunities at the FBI ' s Quantico , Virginia headquarters . Notable personnel . Major General Ra ' uf Khayrat , an assistant director of SSI . 9 April 1994 he was killed in front of his home by a Sunni terrorist group . A current leader of al - Qaeda Ayman al - Zawahiri mentioned this killing : " Ra ' uf Khayrat was one of the most dangerous officers in the State Security Intelligence Department who fought the fundamentalists . He adopted several strict security precautions , such as changing his residence every few months , keeping his home unguarded , and driving his car personally to look like he was an ordinary person with no connection to the authority . However , the Islamic Group colleagues managed to reach him . As he was emerging from his home and about to get into his car , one of the brother mujahidin approached him and threw a bomb inside his car , and he was killed instantly " . A trial about the case of the Returnees from Albania in 1999 became the largest one since the assassination of Anwar Sadat . On November 23 , 1985 , EgyptAir Flight 648 was hijacked by three Abu Nidal terrorists . When the hijackers started collecting passports , agent Methad Mustafa Kamal opened fire , killing one hijacker instantly and engaging in a gun battle with the second hijacker . Kamal was mortally wounded by the third and lead hijacker , Omar Rezaq , who came out of the cockpit . Allegations of torture . In a report in 2002 , the United Nations Committee against Torture expressed " particular concern at the widespread evidence of torture and ill - treatment in administrative premises under the control of the State Security Investigation Department , the infliction of which is reported to be facilitated by the lack of any mandatory inspection by an independent body of such premises . " Human Rights Watch reported that " Egyptian authorities have a longstanding and well - documented record of engaging in arbitrary arrests , incommunicado detention , and torture and other ill - treatment of detainees , " and that the SSI has in particular committed acts of torture and denied detainees fundamental human rights . A US diplomatic cable reported that police brutality and torture are " routine and pervasive " . The cable also reported that the security services functioned as " instruments of power that serve and protect the regime " . Both Egyptian and international human rights groups , as well as the United Nations Committee Against Torture , have documented widespread use of torture by the SSI , with Human Rights Watch singling out the SSI in what it called a " pervasive culture of impunity " with regard to torture . Involvement in extraordinary rendition . Italian authorities investigating the illegal abduction of Egyptian - born cleric Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr , also known as Abu Omar , from the streets of Milan on February 17 , 2003 have said that his final disposition , after a flight from Aviano to Ramstein and then from Ramstein to Alexandria , was into the hands of the SSI . At least one of the CIA officials named in the indictment , Robert Seldon Lady , is said to have accompanied Omar to Egypt , and to have spent two weeks in Cairo assisting in Omar ' s interrogation . 2011 revolution and after . One of the major demands of protesters during the Egyptian revolution was the abolition of the State Security Investigations . Following the 25th of January 2011 Revolution , on the 4th & 5 March 2011 , several SSI buildings were raided across Egypt by protesters . Protesters state they raided in the buildings to secure documents they believed to show various crimes committed by the SSI against the people of Egypt during Mubarak ' s rule . On the night of 5 March in Cairo , " the sight of a dump truck emerging from the Cairo compound laden with shredded paper sent protesters into a fury , creating the momentum that drove the crowd past the army soldiers outside and into the hastily abandoned main building . " Most notably at the Nasr City HQ in Cairo were many acquired documents which seemed to prove mass surveillance of citizens as well as torturing tools and secret cells . Protesters broke into the building in Alexandria on March 4 , after clashing with security forces , and on March 5 others entered the headquarters in the central city of Assiut . In Cairo , another building breached was in 6th of October City , where " some of the most incriminating documents have already been destroyed . " McClatchy Newspapers reported that , when there was much uncertainty about the validity of documents which emerged , " [ p ] erhaps the most controversial document to ricochet around Internet message boards was one that purport [ ed ] to lay out State Security ' s involvement in [ the ] deadly church bombing on New Year ' s Day in the port city of Alexandria . . . . The legitimacy of the document hasn ' t been determined , but its distribution touched off protests Sunday in Cairo by hundreds of Coptic Christians . " Other documents uncovered included names of judges involved in fixing elections and those of a small number of Egyptians who were informants . The publishing of these names posed a moral dilemma for some of the protesters , balancing the danger the informants would be put under against anger at having been spied on . On 15 March 2011 , SSIS was dissolved by Interior Minister Mansour el - Issawy in response to the revelations of the previous weeks . He also announced plans for the establishment of a new " National Security Sector " to take over SSIS ' s counter - terrorism and other domestic - security responsibilities .