Dozens of protest detainees killed in Egypt, in Cold Blood
Cairo, 19 Aug 2013
Egyptian police say at least 35 detained protesters have been killed while attempting to escape from a prison convoy, but the Muslim Brotherhood has alleged that their supporters were killed in cold blood and called for an international inquiry into the incident.. The deaths were the fourth mass killing of civilians since the military took control on July 3, but the first time so many had died while in government custody, the New York Times reports.
The news of the deaths came on a day when there appeared to be a pause in the street battles that had claimed more than 1,000 lives since Wednesday, most of them Islamists and their supporters gunned down by security forces. The Islamists took measures on Sunday to avoid further confrontations, including canceling several protests over the military’s ouster of a democratically elected Islamist-led government.
The Egyptian MENA news agency said that the van transporting the men pulled over and was attacked by armed gunmen. It reported that the prisoners took a police officer hostage in an attempt to escape but were killed in a shootout, not by tear gas as claimed by the government.
Al Jazeera’s Bernard Smith, reporting from Cairo, quoted a source who said the men had been arrested at the end of a siege at Cairo’s Fateh mosque on Saturday. More than 200 people were said to have been arrested there on various charges including “terrorism”.
Call for probe
In a statement on Sunday, the Anti-Coup Alliance said it had “obtained evidence of the assassination of anti-coup detainees in a truck transferring them to Abu Zaabal prison”.
“They were reportedly assassinated in their truck with live ammunition and tear gas fired from windows.”
“The murder of 35 detained anti-coup protestors affirms the intentional violence aimed at opponents of the coup, and the cold-blooded killing of which they are targets,” it said in a statement in English.\
Abu Zabaal was the scene of a mass breakout of prisoners in 2011 as police abandoned their posts during protests against the former president Hosni Mubarak.
The group said it “puts full criminal responsibility on leaders of the 3rd of July coup, beginning with Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi, [Egypt's army chief], and Minister of Interior Muhammad Ibrahim Kamel.”
In the statement, the Anti-Coup Alliance demanded “an international investigation into this horrific crime, in addition to other crimes committed by leaders of the 3rd of July coup”.
General Sisi deposed Morsi on 3 July, saying that the army could not ignore the millions of protesters who had been demanding the resignation of Egypt’s first democratically elected president.
On Sunday, Anti-Coup protesters broke a military curfew to march through Cairo, as the latest violence added to the rising death toll in days of unrest.
On Saturday alone, clashes between Morsi supporters and police killed 79 people, according to a government tally released on Sunday and carried by MENA, raising the death toll for four days of unrest across the country to over 800 people killed.
About 70 police officers were killed in clashes with protesters or retaliatory attacks during the same period, according to the interior ministry.
RESOURCES:
UAE plots behind Egyptian coup d’etat
http://www.judgmentforsale.com/blog/uae-plots-behind-egyptian-coup-detat/
Evil prospers when good men do nothing
‘Tolerating evil leads only to more evil. And when good people stand by and do nothing while wickedness reigns, their communities will be consumed’. Evil prospers when good men do nothing
http://www.reparationlaw.com/news/egyptians-die-the-west-watches/
A shocking video of the Rabaa Massacre:
Published by Elwatan News on Aug 14, 2013 [This video has been age-restricted]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wh2ZBsNY5pw
Timeline: Egypt’s rocky revolution
http://apps.washingtonpost.com/g/page/world/timeline-egypts-rocky-revolution/405/
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