36 Brotherhood Detainees Killed Near Cairo
The Anti-Coup Alliance issued a statement claiming that it had “obtained evidence of the assassination of at least 38 anti-coup detainees in a truck transferring them to Abu Zaabal prison.”
The group said it “puts full criminal responsibility” on the leaders of the July 3 military coup, including Egyptian army chief General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and Interior Minister Mohamed Ibrahim Kamel, and demanded an international investigation into the “horrific crime.”
Dozens of Muslim Brotherhood supporters died on Sunday 18 August as police escorting prisoners in trucks exchanged fire with armed men near Cairo. Conflicting reports stated that some or all of those killed suffocated from tear gas.
Thirty-six Islamist prisoners were killed in Egypt while being transferred to Abu Zaabal prison in northern Cairo, Egypt’s Interior Ministry said. Police used force to prevent the escape of the prisoners when they began to riot.
“Thirty-six of the prisoners died of suffocation and crowding after tear gas was used to stop their escape,” the ministry said.
However, several different accounts of events emerged in Egyptian media, alleging the involvement of a group of gunmen who attacked the prisoner convoy. Furthermore, there were reports that a police officer was taken hostage by detainees during the melee.
According to the version given by the state media on EGYNews.net and quoted by RT’s Bel Trew, a police truck transporting detainees was attacked by a group of armed men. During the incident, which was said to be taking place in a car park, a police officer was taken hostage. Officers responded by firing tear gas, and the people inside the prison truck subsequently suffocated to death.
Evidence elsewhere describes how the vehicles in which they were riding had been attacked with rocket-propelled grenades. Then it was reported that militants forced the vehicles to stop and ordered the police to lie on the ground before shooting them execution-style.
The Telegraph reported, the grisly photographs of the slain police “raised doubts: the bodies appeared to have been lined up after death. The hands of one were behind his back, as if tied, yet there was no binding.”
The detainees were held pending investigations into the Ramses Square clashes, the report added.
Meanwhile, the military has seized upon the deaths of 25 policemen which took place the following day in the Sinai desert near the Rafah border crossing with Gaza to bolster its pretense that the bloody state violence in Cairo and elsewhere is a “struggle against terrorism.”
Amr Darrag from Egypt’s Freedom and Justice Party told RT that “the Muslim Brotherhood has always been protecting churches.” Citing a priest in Minya – where many Christian churches were attacked this week – Darrag said that the “attacks were orchestrated by thugs who cooperate with security forces.” He added that allegations of Islamist groups attacking the places of worship are unfounded. “These allegations are being propounded by the current [regime], in order to justify the aggression.”
Darrag also said that mass media often misinterprets the entire picture of the conflict, placing pro-Morsi protesters in one camp and government forces in the other. They are composed of “several fractions of Egyptians,” the politician said, adding that some are not organized or united under any banner. “They are all protesting and marching to regain democracy back.”
Auken, BV “Egypt’s Military Consolidates Dictatorship as Washington Reviews Aid” http://www.globalresearch.ca/egypts-foreign-relations-on-tightrope/5346829
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Sitara Brooj Akbar, at the age of 11, passed six O’level subjects including Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry and Biology.
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