Egypt's Rabaa Deaths 'Crime against Humanity'


Egypt's Rabaa Deaths 'Crime against Humanity'

TEHRAN (Tasnim) - A new report has alleged that the Egyptian security forces' killings of at least 1,000 protesters at the Rabaa al-Adawiya Square sit-in last year in Cairo "most likely amount to crimes against humanity".

The 195-page Human Rights Watch (HRW) report released on Tuesday found that Egyptian security forces "gunned down hundreds of unarmed protesters" when they moved in to disperse the sit-in on August 14.

The killings were "part of a policy to use lethal force against largely unarmed protesters on political grounds," HRW found, and resulted in "one of the world's largest killings of demonstrators in a single day in recent history".

HRW said that over a dozen senior Egyptian leaders should be investigated for their parts in the protesters' deaths, including Interior Minister Mohamed Ibrahim and current President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, who was defence minister at the time.

"This wasn’t merely a case of excessive force or poor training. It was a violent crackdown planned at the highest levels of the Egyptian government. Many of the same officials are still in power in Egypt, and have a lot to answer for," said Kenneth Roth, HRW’s executive director, in a statement.

Roth was denied entry into Egypt on Monday, along with another senior staff member, after being held at Cairo's international airport for 12 hours. They were on their way to Egypt to release the report.

Badr Abdel Atty, the Egyptian ministry of foreign affairs spokesperson, told Al Jazeera on Monday that the government would not comment on the report until it was officially released.

Omar Shafik, a fellow at HRW, told Al Jazeera that the group sent the full text of the report to several Egyptian ministries ahead of publication, but that the government did not respond to their requests for comment. "We didn’t receive responses to any of our queries," Shafik said.

In a statement after the killings, however, Egypt's state information service (SIS) said that efforts to peacefully disperse the rally were "rejected by leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood".

"The Ministry of Interior used loudspeakers, appealed to those who were in the two sit-ins to exit, not to use women, elders and children as a human shield, they were allowed to leave and provided with safe exit passages that had been already declared," the SIS said.

Tens of thousands of Egyptians began a sit-in near the Rabaa al-Adawiya mosque, in Cairo’s Nasr City district, following the military's removal of President Mohamed Mursi on July 3 last year after major protests against his rule.

 

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