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Brotherhood detainees die near Cairo as Islamists attack prison
convoy – state media
Dozens
of Muslim Brotherhood supporters died on Sunday as police escorting
prisoners in trucks exchanged fire with Islamist attackers near
Cairo, state media said. Conflicting reports stated that some or all
of those killed suffocated from tear gas.
RT,
18 August, 2013, 18.24
Thirty-six
Islamist prisoners were killed in Egypt while being transferred to
Abu Zaabal prison in northern Cairo, Egypt’s official MENA news
agency said.
The
statement did not provide a detailed picture of the incident, but
indicated that some of the killed detainees were trying to escape the
prison.
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.
The
detainees were held pending investigations into the Ramses Square
clashes, the report added.
State media story makes no sense- who kidnapped the soldier, why tear gas? How did the gas get in the truck?
Wildly
varying accounts of the events immediately emerged in the media and
on Twitter.
AFP
cited official sources that said the men were teargassed after
starting a prison mutiny, and that they were all Islamists.
Reuters
quoted the Interior Ministry statement as saying that a number of
detainees tried to escape from a prison on the outskirts of Cairo and
had taken a police officer hostage. An undisclosed number of people
had died from inhaling tear gas rounds in subsequent clashes, the
agency said, adding that the officer was freed but badly wounded.
Al
Jazeera quoted a source who said that all 38 prisoners were actually
shot after taking a police officer hostage. The media outlet also
said the men were being transported to the Cairo prison, adding that
they were all detained in the Al-Fath mosque siege.
Brotherhood
supporters hit the streets as army vows to confront violence
Muslim
Brotherhood supporters took to the streets of Egypt, despite reports
that Sunday protests were called off. The army said it will not
tolerate violence amid news that thousands of Morsi loyalists were
allegedly arrested and facing terrorism charges.
RT,
18
August, 2013, 18.24
Several
marches of supporters of deposed President Mohamed Morsi kicked off
on Sunday evening in Cairo districts, media reports stated. The
number of people taking part was not immediately clear, but they were
all said to be heading to the Constitutional Court.
Hundreds
of Brotherhood supporters could be also seen marching in Giza,
located some 20 kilometers from Cairo. According to reports, the
demonstrators are headed to the capital to join others.
Conflicting
reports said that the Brotherhood canceled its Sunday rallies,
including the march to the the Constitutional Court, due to security
concerns. Brotherhood officials, quoted by Al Jazeera, said they were
calling off their planned protest marches due to “the presence of
army snipers on buildings along the routes.”
AFP
also quoted spokeswoman for the Brotherhood-led Anti-Coup Coalition,
Yasmine Adel, who said that only “several” Cairo marches were
canceled, while the others are still taking place.
The
rally was planned as the first in a series of daily protests in
response to this week’s violent crackdown on Brotherhood sit-ins,
which resulted in more than 700 deaths. The Islamist group has dubbed
the action the “The Putschists’ Departure week.”
Meanwhile,
Egyptian Army chief General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi on Sunday warned
that the military would not tolerate further violence, and called on
the Muslim Brotherhood to join the political process, according to a
statement posted on the Army’s Facebook page.
Prosecutors
are investigating some 250 Brotherhood supporters on charges of
murder, attempted murder and terrorism, state MENA news agency
reported.
Egypt’s
security forces have arrested 3,500 supporters of deposed President
Mohamed Morsi since August 14, Ahram Online cited Muslim Brotherhood
lawyer Mustafa El-Demeery as saying. El-Demeery said about 2,000
Morsi loyalists were arrested during the dispersal of the Rabaa
Al-Adaweya and Al-Nahda sit-ins on Wednesday. Some 1,500 more were
arrested during clashes between Morsi supporters, security forces and
downtown Cairo residents in and around Ramses Square on Friday, the
lawyer said.
The
continued detention of more than 400 Morsi loyalists arrested during
the Ramses Square clashes has already been ordered by prosecutors,
according to Ahram Online. The rest of the detained are reportedly
being questioned.
"There
will be no reconciliation with those whose hands have been stained
with blood and who turned weapons against the state and its
institutions,” Egyptian Prime Minister Hazem el-Beblawi told
reporters earlier on Saturday.
79
people died and 549 were wounded in Saturday violence across Egypt,
the state news agency cited the Egyptian government as saying.
El-Beblawi
has also put forward a proposal to dissolve the Muslim Brotherhood
and prohibit the movement in the country, labeling it a terrorist
group and accusing the Brotherhood of provoking the bloodshed.
The
Egyptian State Information Service accused the Muslim Brotherhood of
having links with Al-Qaeda, and blamed Western media for biased
coverage of events in Egypt.
“Egypt
is feeling severe bitterness towards some Western media coverage that
is biased toward the Muslim Brotherhood, and [fails to] shed light on
violence and terrorist acts perpetrated by this group in the form of
intimidation operations and terrorizing citizens. Let alone the
killing of innocent people and setting churches and public and
private property on fire, along with storming police stations and
blocking roads and all other forms of thuggery and sabotage,” the
information service said in a statement.
Handouts
at a Sunday press conference left no room for interpretation of the
new government’s vision of this week’s actions by the military.
Ahmed
Hawary, of Egypt's Constitution Party, told RT that had witnessed the
Muslim Brotherhood’s aggression on the streets.
“[Their
protests] were not peaceful at all,” Hawary said. “The sit-in in
Rabaa continually spread out marches to the surrounding
neighborhoods, where a lot of militants were shooting at any crowd,
any civilians in the streets who were anti-Morsi or anti-Muslim
Brotherhood. I was also caught in the crossfire when the Muslim
Brotherhood were shooting at civilians on Tahrir Square for three
hours.”
Pro-Morsi
supporters see the events of the last few days in Egypt in a
completely different light. Dr. Saad Amer, a member of the Egyptian
Forum in the UK, told RT that what was happening in Egypt was nothing
short of a severe crackdown on peaceful protesters.
“It’s
an attack of the system against innocent peaceful demonstrations,”
Amer said. “This is not violence in the street. These are not
clashes. These are people committing massacres against innocent
people. And then they were portrayed as they weren’t, because they
have the media and they have just been telling lies all the time.
There are tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of peaceful
people on the streets. We can’t see anyone with any weapon among
these women, children families from all parts of Egypt. Those who
organize those demonstrations have declared clearly, that they are
peaceful.”
Despite
the accusations brought by the Egyptian government against the Muslim
Brotherhood, Western governments are not describing it as a terrorist
organization, and have called on the Egyptian government to return to
dialogue with the group.
“We
regret deeply that international efforts and proposals for building
bridges and establishing an inclusive political process, to which the
EU contributed actively, were set aside and a course of confrontation
was instead pursued,” European Council President Herman Van Rompuy
and European Commission President José Manuel Barroso said in a
joint statement. “This path will not succeed. It is crucial that
violence ends immediately.”
The
leaders of the 28-member bloc announced that the EU would urgently
review its relations with Egypt. They have called for an immediate
halt to violence in the country, for the resumption of political
dialogue and a return to democratic rule.
A
plain clothes policeman (upper left) points his gun as security
forces escort Muslim Brotherhood members through supporters of the
interim government installed by the army from the al-Fath mosque on
Ramses Square in Cairo August 17, 2013. (Reuters/Amr Abdallah Dalsh)A
plain clothes policeman (upper left) points his gun as security
forces escort Muslim Brotherhood members through supporters of the
interim government installed by the army from the al-Fath mosque on
Ramses Square in Cairo August 17, 2013. (Reuters/Amr Abdallah Dalsh)
German
Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said he feared Egypt might be on
the brink of a civil war.
“In
its way of dealing with the opposition, the Egyptian government must
now be cautious and find a solution to de-escalate the situation.
There is no alternative to bilateral talks,” he said, Euronews
reported.
The
EU has an emergency meeting scheduled for Monday, where leaders of
the member states will discuss the possibility of suspending 1
billion euro in aid to Cairo.
Earlier
this week US President Barack Obama cancelled joint US-Egypt military
drills scheduled to take place in September, following Wednesday’s
crackdown on pro-Morsi protesters.
What
has so far remained in place, though, is $1.3 billion of aid to the
country’s military.
UN
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon condemned the attacks on churches,
hospitals, and other public facilities in Egypt, calling on both
sides of the conflict “to adopt a credible plan to contain the
violence and revive the political process hijacked by violence.”
Ban
added: "With such sharp polarization in Egyptian society, both
the authorities and the political leaders share the responsibility
for ending the current violence."
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