And yet, in a serendipitous counter-point, one of South Africa's most illustrious human rights advocates, George Bizos, recalled the other day how a similar paper trail had undone Mr. Goniwe's confessed killer — a former security police officer who went before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to seek amnesty after Nelson Mandela came to power.
"We have a strong security, police and judicial system.
"There was no threat against Anna Lindh, and that's why she didn't have any bodyguard protection," Kurt Malmstroem, a senior security police officer, told Swedish radio.
Its citizens were kept in check by a powerful security police and by heavy state control over their economic affairs in such matters as jobs, housing and financial transactions while still enjoying the outward forms of democracy.
Ms. Bodine, the task force's sole spokesman for much of the last two weeks, acknowledged that little progress had been made in American attempts to reverse a Yemeni security police embargo that has sharply curtailed the F.B.I.'s role.
The court received no answer to this cruel and silly question, but one could easily have found an answer had he permitted his imagination to dwell for a few minutes on the fate of those Dutch Jews who in 1941, in the old Jewish quarter of Amsterdam, dared to attack a German security police detachment.
As if to underscore the change, hundreds of protesters in Cairo stormed a headquarters of the state security police, a hated organization that Mr. Adly used to run.
Imperial Russia developed to a greater extent than any contemporary country a powerful and ubiquitous security police.
At noon on Feb. 16, a year after she started working at the center, a half-dozen Syrian security police officers stormed the center's offices, waving their guns.
He tried to give the security police a better image and spoke up for national elites playing a more active role in their territories.
