Egyptian Interior Minister Mansur al-Issawi disbanded the long-feared security police on Tuesday barely 10 days after taking office on a pledge to restore public confidence, state media said.
The reform, which has been among the key demands of protesters who already brought down Hosni Mubarak last month, was announced as US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was in Cairo to lend her support to the transition from the veteran president's authoritarian rile.
"Interior Minister Mansur al-Issawi decided today to cancel all administrative branches and offices of State Security in all the republic's provinces," the official MENA news agency reported.
Issawi also announced the establishment of a new security arm, called National Security, that would be restricted to "guarding the domestic front and battling terrorism," it added.
Officers will be selected in the coming days to staff the new apparatus, MENA said.
The security branch, which was empowered to conduct emergency trials, was widely despised and its officers accused of committing torture.
Protesters stormed several state security buildings early this month to retrieve files kept on the population by the powerful regime apparatus long accused of human rights abuses.
In one incident, hundreds of protesters outside the state security headquarters in Cairo were attacked by armed civilians, as the army fired warning shots and used sticks to disperse the crowd, prompting Washington to voice its concern.
Protesters who forced Mubarak's ouster have repeatedly called for the abolition of the State Security Investigations, which has at least 100,000 employees and a large network of informants.
Issawi said last week that most were no longer turning up for work.
The SSI has been accused by pro-democracy activists of stirring up tensions between Christians and Muslims and of launching attacks on protesters demanding the apparatus's dissolution.
Insecurity has been rife in recent weeks, with political and religious clashes erupting around the capital, in what the new cabinet described as a "counter-revolution" by diehards of the old regime.
At least 13 people were killed in clashes between Christians and Muslims in Cairo last week, after days of demonstrations by Coptic Christians furious over the torching of a church in the provincial town of Sol, south of Cairo.
Egypt's recently appointed Prime Minister Essam Sharaf had vowed to reform the dreaded security apparatus as he addressed thousands of people in Cairo's Tahrir Square, the focal point of the protests that toppled Mubarak.
"I pray that Egypt will be a free country and that its security apparatus will serve the citizens," Sharaf said, as thousands chanted "the people want the end of the state security."
Issawi already made a series of pledges for security service reform last week in response to the public grievances.
"The era of tapping private phones is over," he said. "There will be no phone tapping except with the prior permission of the general prosecution according to the law."
He promised that security police would "no longer intervene in universities and institutions and will no longer choose the imams of mosques or control arms licences."
Previously deputy of security in Cairo and Giza provinces and a former governor of Minya province, Issawi is widely hailed for his efforts to curb corruption while in office.
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