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BARE chested, hands bound, terror written across their faces the two men shown off to the baying throng of anti-government protesters knew the game was up.

Dressed as pro-Mubarak supporters, they had been captured during one of the bloody battles in central Cairo – but now their true identities had been discovered

The men were amin dowla, undercover officers in Egypt’s hated State Security Service, the SSI.

Mubarak’s brutal secret police are said to be responsible for the disappearance, torture, rape and killing of thousands of pro-democracy campaigners and innocent people.

This week, backed by hired thugs, they were bussed into Tahrir Square armed with machetes, whips, metal pipes, knives, hand-made swords and Molotov cocktails to take on the protesters – and foreign journalists reporting the country’s freedom battles.

But their actions merely exposed the type of violence meted out daily to hundreds of prisoners in SSI torture chambers.

Not that it is any secret. A cable sent to Washington by the US ambassador to Cairo in 2009 revealed: “Torture and police brutality in Egypt are endemic and widespread. The police use brutal methods against common criminals to extract confessions, but also against demonstrators.”

And last week a damning report by Human Rights Watch into mistreatment of detainees exposed an epidemic of torture.

Complaints by victims and their families rarely reach court because of intimidation and in four years only seven officers have been convicted of ill-treatment. But the testimonies of victims and horrific video footage posted on the internet show the true extent of the sadistic crimes committed by Mubarak’s goons.

Ahmad Abd al-Mo’ez Basha, a 22-year-old driver from Cairo, told HRW how officers arrested him at his home last July.

He said: “They took me to Imbaba police station and put me in a room by myself. Two officers came in and told me to confess. I asked, ‘What to?’ They answered, ‘Confess to the theft’.

“The head of the criminal investigations unit said, ‘Work on him until he confesses’. They handcuffed my hands in front of me and hung me from the door for more than two hours. They had whips and hit me on the legs, on the bottom of my feet, and on my back. When they took me down, they brought a black electric device and applied electro-shocks four or five times to my arms until they started smoking.

“The next morning they beat me again until I fainted after three hours.”

Nasr al-Sayed Hassan Nasr, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, claims he was held blindfolded for 60 days last year in a secret SSI cell 35 metres below ground.

He said: “They beat me with a shoe across the face. They kicked me in the testicles so that I’d fall to the ground. Once on the floor they used electro-shocks to make me stand up and then would kick me again in the testicles. At one point the officer tried to strangle me. They took photos while I was naked and being tortured and threatened to publish them.”

A horrific video posted online shows an Egyptian woman in her 30s being beaten mercilessly with a stick by an SSI officer until her agonised screams stop. She is then strung up horizontally with her hands and feet tied to a pole. It is a notorious SSI torture technique known as the “chicken position”, causing horrific pain.

Another video shows a young Egyptian being tortured in a police station.

The first shot shows the skin on his back and stomach flayed from a beating.

In the second, he appears blindfolded, weeping and imploring: “I beg you. We’re human beings, not animals.” The officer is heard shouting at the man to “Shut up”.

It is not clear what happened to the two amin dowla paraded in Tahrir Square or his 20 colleagues also captured.

But after 30 years of repression, the SSI are now the ones living in fear.