After establishing the 30 June Fact-Finding Committee in December 2013, to investigate the killings and the events that precipitated and followed the protests, the Egyptian Government released an executive summary of the committee’s findings in November 2014, but failed to recommend charges against any government official or member of the security forces.
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The Cairo global Airport website was briefly closed Friday after it was hacked by pro-Muslim Brotherhood hackers Friday on the anniversary of the 2013 dispersal of Rabaa sit-in.
Egypt is getting ready for planned protests by supporters of ousted President Mohamed Morsi on Friday to mark the second anniversary of the violent breakup of major protest camps in Cairo, in which hundreds of demonstrators were killed.
“In revenge for the blood of the martyrs killed by the military gang and [President Abdel Fattah] el-Sisi following the coup, you will drown in the blood of the protesters you killed”.
In a report based on a year-long investigation, Human Rights Watch said last year that at least 817 demonstrators were killed in Rabaa and 87 in Nahda.
Hundreds of protesters from that day are still detained, including a photojournalist. One group called for a UN inquiry.
Dr Maha Azzam, Head of the Egyptian Revolutionary Council (ERC) said, “Rabaa is a crime against humanity for which there has been no accountability”.
He said authorities had issued warnings days before dispersing the Islamist protesters, adding that security forces had to respond with force after coming under fire from protesters.
According to the National Human Rights Council, the dispersal of both protest camps that day left 632 people, including eight policemen, dead.
The Egyptians were not happy with foreign delegations arriving at the presidential Heliopolis Palace to mediate between the interim government and the Brotherhood.
There has also been an increase in militant attacks against security forces, with one group pledging allegiance to the Islamic State group.
The dispersal of the Rab’a al-Adawiya sit-in occurred on August 14, 2013, a little more than a month after the Egyptian military – under then-Defense Minister al-Sisi – removed Mohamed Morsy, Egypt’s first freely elected president and a former high-level official in the Muslim Brotherhood.
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The Brotherhood, for its part, insists that it is committed to peaceful activism.
