Ramadan Abdel Rehim Mansour was the leader of a gang that preyed on street children in Egypt in the first years of the 2000s. He was known as al-Tourbini, the Egyptian word for an express train, because the railways were where the gang found its victims. On May 23, 2007, the criminal court in Tanta, about 90 kilometers north of Cairo, convicted him and his deputy, Farag Samir Mahmoud, known as Hanata, of murdering 20 street children, with other charges, and of illegal possession of weapons, and sentenced both men to death. Mansour was 27 and Mahmoud was 25. The Associated Press reported that the case had shocked Egypt. Both men were hanged on the morning of Thursday, December 16, 2010.
The figures in the case never settled. The two men confessed to killing 20 children, but police had recovered the remains of only eight of them by the time of the verdict. Early press reports spoke of 14 boys and then of 40 children. A retrospective in 2024 gave at least 32.
Mansour was born in Tanta, the main city of Gharbia governorate in the Nile Delta, according to a 2024 account of the case in Egypt Telegraph. The same account says that as a child he fell in with a street gang and learned from its members how to survive and how to commit crimes, and that he learned early to take revenge on anyone who stood up to him, above all anyone who threatened to report him to the police.
Egypt Telegraph's account, drawing on what he told police investigators, says Mansour rode the trains and felt safer in Alexandria because, by his account, there were fewer police there. The nickname came from the trains. Egypt Telegraph reports that it was given to him after two members of his gang were arrested in 2006, and that it referred to the express trains on which the gang worked.
The children the gang targeted were among the most exposed people in the country. There were no official figures for homeless and street children in Egypt, the Associated Press noted at the time of the verdict; estimates ran from 200,000 to one million, and about a quarter of them were believed to be under 12.
The gang lured street children who spent their time around the train stations, according to reports in the Egyptian press in late 2006. The first reports spoke of boys; the 2024 account gives the victims' ages as 10 to 14.
The case first surfaced in October 2006 in reports in an independent Egyptian daily newspaper, the Associated Press said. In November 2006 a murdered child was found in Shubra al-Khaimah, on the edge of Cairo, and police quickly arrested seven suspects, Mansour and Mahmoud among them, Egypt Independent later reported.
According to Daily News Egypt, the local press reported at the end of November 2006 that two men had been arrested in connection with the deaths of 14 boys. The bodies of children had been found in several cities, and the case had puzzled the police until the two men fell into a police trap. Daily News Egypt named them as Ahmed Samir Abdel Menem, 18, and Mohammed Al-Suweisi. Investigators said the two belonged to a group of four men, and gave the nicknames of the other members as Buka, Bazaza and Turini, a rendering of the nickname under which Mansour became known. The two men confessed to killing the boys together with their accomplices, the paper reported, and were guiding police to the places where the bodies had been left while officers searched for the others.
The victims, as reported then, came from Cairo and from the governorates of Qalyubia, Alexandria, Beheira, Beni Suef and Gharbia.
One of the dead children was named in the first reports. Daily News Egypt identified him as Mohamed Kamal, a boy from Tanta. He had testified as a witness in a court case against the man the paper called Turini, and that man had been jailed as a result. After his release, according to the report, he ordered the boy killed. The paper's later report on the case repeated the account: the two men admitted killing Mohamed Kamal, who had been a witness in the case that jailed Mansour, and said that Mansour ordered the killing after he was freed.
Egypt Telegraph's 2024 account tells a similar story of an earlier arrest. In its version a 12-year-old boy in the gang reported Mansour to the police, Mansour was arrested and then released for lack of evidence, and afterward he took revenge on the boy. That account gives the boy a different name.
By the end of December 2006, Daily News Egypt reported, Mansour had been arrested the previous month on charges involving the deaths of 40 street children. The investigation had widened in an unexpected direction. Mansour told police that he had caused a train crash at Kafr al-Dawwar in 1998, in which 58 people were killed. The paper reported his account that, after a train conductor threatened to report him at the next station, he interfered with the train's braking system.
Prosecutors took the claim seriously enough to review the technical and forensic evidence from the accident and consult experts. A railway official told the paper that Mansour's account was not plausible: separating a car from a train, he said, was not as simple as pulling a hand brake, and more complex technical faults had caused the crash.
The arrests also brought families of children who had been missing for a long time to the prosecutor's office. They sent photographs of their sons so that investigators could check whether any of them had been among the gang's victims. Shown the photograph of a boy from Damanhour who had been missing for three years, Mansour said he had never seen him. He told investigators that he had committed so many crimes that he could not remember their number or where they had happened.
During his interrogation, Egypt Telegraph reports, Mansour blamed what he had done on a female jinn, which he said had possessed him and ordered him to commit the crimes. Mansour and Mahmoud both confessed, Egypt Independent reported, to crimes committed in six different cities.
The case was tried before the criminal court in Tanta. On Wednesday, May 23, 2007, the court found Mansour and Farag Samir Mahmoud guilty of the murder of 20 street children, with other charges, and of illegal possession of weapons, and sentenced both to death, the Associated Press reported in a dispatch by Nadia Abou El-Magd that was printed by IOL in South Africa. The two had admitted killing 20 street children; police had recovered the remains of only eight. The report described the crimes as taking place over five years.
Under Egyptian law the judge referred the death sentences to the Grand Mufti for his opinion. The opinion is advisory, but it is a required step before a death sentence becomes final. Court officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said they expected the Mufti's opinion by June 20, 2007, the date to which the court adjourned the case of five other defendants.
Those five other defendants were later sentenced to prison terms of between three and 40 years, Egypt Independent reported in 2010.
Mansour and Mahmoud were hanged on the morning of Thursday, December 16, 2010, Egypt Independent reported that day in an article by Sami Abdel Radi, translated from the paper's Arabic edition. The case was known in Egypt as the case of al-Tourbini's street children. Egypt Independent described the two men as having been convicted of crimes against eight children, a lower figure than the 20 the Associated Press reported at the verdict. Egypt Telegraph's 2024 account says the two men were hanged at Borg El Arab prison.
Mansour's brother told Egypt Independent that their mother fainted when she was told the sentence had been carried out. "She was the first one to know," he said. The family had visited Mansour in prison the week before. He was calm, his brother said, and did not appear to know what was about to happen.
The nickname outlived him. In January 2018 the Cairo daily Youm7 published an investigation into the exploitation of runaway children around the railway warehouses and workshops near Ramses station in Cairo, under a headline that spoke of al-Tourbini's empire. The report recalled that Ramadan Abdel Rahim Mansour, known as al-Tourbini, had led a gang in Tanta in 2006 that preyed on street children and that he and an accomplice had been executed in 2010. It found that children who arrived by train from the provinces, many after quarrels at home, were still settling around the station, were recruited by older men to sell goods on the trains and to beg, and slept in warehouses, shacks and parked carriages. A maintenance worker at the workshops and a vendor who worked the trains told the reporters that the area was easy to enter and unguarded. Police campaigns made arrests, the report said, but those arrested often came back after short sentences.
The number of victims. The court convicted Mansour of murdering 20 children, with other charges, according to the Associated Press, and that is the figure proven in court. The same report says police had recovered the remains of eight. Egypt Independent in 2010 gave the convictions as relating to eight children. The figure of 14 boys appeared in the first reports of the two arrests in November 2006; the figure of 40 children appeared in reports of the charges in December 2006; and a figure of at least 32 children over seven years appears in Egypt Telegraph's 2024 retrospective. None of the higher figures was proven in court.
The length of the series. The Associated Press gave five years; Egypt Telegraph gave seven.
The 1998 train crash. Mansour's claim that he caused the Kafr al-Dawwar crash was rejected as implausible by a railway official quoted at the time. The convictions reported in 2007 were for the murder of street children, with other charges, and for illegal possession of weapons.
The jinn. His claim that a female jinn possessed him is reported from his interrogation; it was his own explanation, not a finding of any court.
1998: A train crash at Kafr al-Dawwar kills 58 people; in 2006 Mansour claims he caused it, a claim a railway official called implausible.
Early 2000s to 2006: The gang preys on street children around railway stations, over five years according to the Associated Press.
October 2006: The case first appears in reports in an independent Egyptian daily.
November 2006: A murdered child is found in Shubra al-Khaimah; police arrest seven suspects, including Mansour and Farag Samir Mahmoud. Two gang members, arrested first, confess and guide police to the places where bodies were left.
December 2006: Reports say Mansour faces charges involving the deaths of 40 street children; prosecutors examine his claim about the 1998 crash.
May 23, 2007: The criminal court in Tanta convicts Mansour, 27, and Mahmoud, 25, of the murder of 20 street children, with other charges, and of illegal possession of weapons, and sentences both to death; the verdict is referred to the Grand Mufti.
June 20, 2007: The date set for the Mufti's opinion and for the court's ruling on five other defendants, who later receive prison terms of three to 40 years.
December 16, 2010: Mansour and Mahmoud are hanged; Egypt Telegraph later places the execution at Borg El Arab prison.
January 2018: Youm7 reports that the exploitation of runaway children around Ramses station continues, under a headline invoking al-Tourbini's name.