(AFP/ File photo)
The Muslim Brotherhood responded Friday to the National Council for Human Rights’ report on security forces’ dispersal of the Rabaa sit-in in August 2013, calling it a “new crime” that added to the “reprehensible track record” of the interim authorities.
The statement, published on the Muslim Brotherhood’s official website, claims the report was fabricated in order to “exonerate the traitorous assassin Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi” who, according to the Brotherhood, is guilty of all crimes found in the NCHR’s report.
Although report acknowledged that the army was present at the clearing, it noted that the police, as well as armed protesters, were responsible for all of the casualties suffered that day.
The statement details a number of issues the recently-outlawed group found with the NCHR report, most of which concern the lack of non-partisan oversight of both the clearing of the protest and the compilation of the report.
The Brotherhood’s statement first says that all NCHR members that produced the report were appointed by Al-Sisi and are opposed to Islamists, calling them “zealous supporters of the military coup”.
The statement also noted that the “government-controlled”’ Akhbar newspaper as well as foreign minister Nabil Fahmy greatly overstated the presence of weapons at the sit-in, saying that both “weapons of mass destruction” and “heavy weapons” were present at the east-Cairo camp, giving security forces a green light to use “unnecessary force”.
The Brotherhood also claims that the “coup forces” who produced the report were trying to downplay the level of violence that occurred. “The report makes no mention of the many cold-blooded snipers who boarded buildings around the square and murdered large numbers of men, women and children,” it said.
The report was also devoid of non-partisan evidence, according to the Brotherood, and relied exclusively on “evidence” provided by ONTV, and “left out massacre witness testimonies documented by several TV channels, many of whom offered to come forward to give statements,” suggesting that the report “only heard accounts of those who zealously supported the massacre.”
“We say that this report is a new certificate of death of the NCHR,” adding that the massacre will never be forgotten by “those who witnessed the blood bath personally and those who saw it on television.”
“This report will deepen the wounds and increase the hatred against the murderers and their treasonous masterminds,” the statement ends, calling the report “another crime that will fuel a new powerful wave of revolutionary non-violent protest action that will haunt all thugs and murderers, especially Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi, until retribution is served.”
The NCHR report states that a majority of the 632 deaths during the dispersal were peaceful protesters. Eleven tortured bodies were also found after the camp’s dispersal, which lasted for twelve hours. Reprisal attacks, which lasted for days, claimed the lives of 64 policemen.
The death toll was compiled from both the Forensic Authority’s numbers as well as a death toll conducted by the independent group Wiki Thawra.
