Mahmoud Tawfik ( ar, محمود توفيق; born 1961) is an Egyptian politician and police officer. He serves as the Egyptian
Minister of Interior
An interior minister (sometimes called a minister of internal affairs or minister of home affairs) is a cabinet official position that is responsible for internal affairs, such as public security, civil registration and identification, emergenc ...
.
Career
Tawfik joined the Egyptian police and graduated from the Police Academy in 1982. Following his graduation, Tawfik worked for various Egyptian security agencies under the control of the Egyptian Ministry of Interior. He started working for the Cairo Security Directorate, before joining the
State Security Investigations Service and later its successor agency, the
National Security Agency
The National Security Agency (NSA) is a national-level intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense, under the authority of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI). The NSA is responsible for global monitoring, collect ...
in 2011.
At the National Security Agency, he served as director of the agency's external operations department before becoming deputy director in 2015. Tawfiq was involved in counter-terrorism activities, especially against Islamist groups, including the
Muslim Brotherhood.
On 29 October 2017, Tawfik was promoted to director of the National Security Agency by then Minister of Interior
Magdy Abdel Ghaffar
Magdy Abdel Ghaffar () is the former Interior Minister of Egypt
Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia via a la ...
after insurgents killed several police officers in an ambush in the
Egyptian Western Desert. During his time as director,
Amnesty International reported that the agency was responsible for large scale human rights violations including torturing, abducting and killing members of the opposition without trial.
On June 14, 2018, President
Abdel Fattah el-Sisi
Abdel Fattah Saeed Hussein Khalil el-Sisi; (born 19 November 1954) is an Egyptian politician and retired military officer who has served as the sixth and current president of Egypt since 2014. Before retiring as a general in the Egyptian mil ...
reshuffled key ministries and appointed Tawfiq as Minister of Interior.
References
1961 births
Living people
Interior Ministers of Egypt
Egyptian police officers
21st-century Egyptian politicians
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