Reuters report reveals how Egyptian security forces killed hundreds in alleged clashes

Egyptian security forces killed 465 suspects over three and a half years, while the ministry said it was fighting with its troops, amid doubts about the authenticity of the accounts.

A Reuters analysis of Egyptian Interior Ministry data on social media sites or published by the official Middle East News Agency from July 1, 2015 to the end of 2018 showed that only six of the 471 men were still alive in 108 incidents , That is, the percentage of those killed reached 98.7%.

The Ministry of the Interior published pictures of the scenes of the events with some data, and in those pictures appeared bodies soaked in blood and next to them assault rifles or other firearms on the ground.

The Ministry of the Interior had a striking similarity. Every time the ministry said its forces were approaching the terrorists 'or criminals' hideout or raiding it, "taking all necessary legal action," the data said terrorists or criminals opened fire and the security forces responded.

Most of the dead were in their 20s and the youngest was 16 and older, 61.

The Interior Ministry described 320 of the dead as terrorists and 28 as criminals or drug traffickers. It said 117 of them were members of the Muslim Brotherhood, which was banned in 2013 after President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi led the overthrow of Mohamed Morsi, Egypt's first president.

104 of the dead - about a quarter of them - fell in the northern Sinai peninsula.

The Ministry of the Interior did not mention the names of the 302 dead men, nor did it mention the exact locations of the clashes in many cases, many of them in desert or mountainous areas.

Doubt
The relatives of 11 of those killed contradicted official accounts. In interviews with Reuters, relatives said their children, brothers or husbands had disappeared for periods that in some cases ended up in several months after they were taken by police or national security agents from the streets or from their homes , And then arrived after the news either through the page of the Ministry of the Interior on Facebook or in a statement issued, and families said none of these men did not carry a weapon.

According to Reuters, these incidents began in the summer of 2015 following the assassination of Egyptian Attorney General Hisham Barakat, and the Sissi law on a comprehensive anti-terrorism law protects the police and the army from legal accountability if they used force in the performance of their duties, and human rights organizations say this was the beginning of a brutal campaign .

A researcher in an Egyptian organization that documents human rights violations said the police had started a wave of "extrajudicial killings because they are a familiar salvation that Mafis Had is a banker, a man who sees and sees."

Models of homicides
Mohammed Abu Amer's family says he worked in central Cairo when he was detained by officers of the National Security on 6 February 2018.

For approximately six months, Amer's family (37 years), married with two children, remained waiting for news. The family cables of the Attorney General and the Ministry of the Interior - representing the police and the national security apparatus - remained unanswered.

On July 31, the Interior Ministry announced on its Facebook page that Amer was one of five terrorists killed in a clash earlier in the day when police approached their hiding place 40 km north of Cairo. The case of the killing of a national security officer.

His family does not believe this story, and his relatives insist that he was not a terrorist, that he died in the hands of the state apparatus and did not die in a gun battle.

Journey by car
Asra Suhail Ahmed and Zakaria Mahmoud say they were not connected to the Muslim Brotherhood or any political organization.

The two - in their 20s - were traveling by car from Damietta for a vacation in the resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.

Ahmed contacted his family a few hours after the trip and told his mother that they stopped to eat juice before a security checkpoint in the Ismailia Governorate overlooking the Suez Canal. This was their last contact with the family.

Five days later, the Interior Ministry said on its Facebook page that the two were among four "Islamic extremists" killed in a clash when police approached their hideout in a village in Ismailia.

Relatives found the bodies of the two in a morgue in Ismailia the next day, and relatives of the two youths said that the official version of events is not logical.

"They are not supporters of the Brotherhood, they are not in favor of any limit," one relative said. "He was like all young people, he dreamed of marrying at a young age and having a family," he said.

Reuters presented the two young men to forensic experts, Professor Derek Pounder, who served as an adviser to Amnesty International and the United Nations, and two other international experts seeking to keep their identity secret. The three questioned the Interior Ministry's account of the death in a gunbattle.

Mahmoud was hit by three bullets in the head, and the entrance of one of the shots was on the side of his right nostril, and its exit from the bottom of the lower lip directly.

"This makes absolute bullets fall from the top position to the victim's right if the victim is standing, which seems unlikely in an exchange of fire," said Bounder.

"The most likely scenario was that the victim was kneeling, and the bullet-fired man was standing near him on the right side."

The other two shots were at the front of Mahmoud in two identical places below the hair to the right and to the left, and Pounder said that was "the two bullets."

Authorities said in the official statement that the two died in one incident with "a group of terrorist elements fugitive."

"As soon as the forces approached them, they were surprised to shoot at them," the Interior Ministry said. "Four terrorists were killed."

However, the three forensics experts said that the bodies of the two young men Mahmoud and Ahmad were in different stages of decay.

The three said Mahmoud's death seemed very modern, but Ahmed died before taking pictures in 36 to 48 hours. Pounder said there had been no apparent injuries before the death or traces of bullets to Ahmed's body and the cause of death was not apparent.

"What is in a fire?"
On October 3, 2016, the Interior Ministry announced that its forces had killed a member of the Brotherhood's Guidance Bureau, Mohammed Kamal, 61, and Yasser Shehata, 47, after they shot at police in a raid on a residential apartment.

Reuters asked three of the neighbors about the events that evening. None of them were seen or heard of a gunbattle. A woman living nearby said the sound of bullets was echoed hours after police entered the apartment.

A person in the apartment building insisted that "it was not a fire." A lawyer speaking for the families of the two men said the official autopsy of their bodies showed that they had been shot in the head.

Cancellation of judgment
The weightlifting family of the 37-year-old weightlifter Khalid Imam said a 2013 court sentenced him to a year in prison for anti-government protests.

To avoid arrest, he moved with his wife and two children to an apartment in the Mokattam area of ​​Cairo, away from the family home.

The family said that Imam was abducted from the street in June 2017 while he was buying medicine for one of the children. Witnesses told his family that masked men jumped out of a minibus and kidnapped him.

The family submitted a communication to the local police and wrote letters to the authorities requesting information but received no reply.

The Ministry of the Interior issued a statement on 2 October 2017 stating that its forces had killed three men in a clash in a cemetery area.

In the Zhenhm morgue in Cairo, a relative found the body of an imam. The relative said the body showed bruises and marks of torture.

He added that "the injuries were two joints, his arm (s) separated from his shoulder, the text of his jaw below me does not exist, and that a number of teeth of the upper jaw was not also."

A week after the death of an imam he was acquitted by an appeals court and his sentence was annulled. The family did not file a complaint about the circumstances of his death for fear of reprisals.

Some of the Ministry of the Interior's data were accompanied by photographs of the juvenile theater, one of which is a picture of the scene after the shooting in November 2018.

The Interior Ministry said security forces killed 19 men in a clash in the desert west of Minya city in Upper Egypt.

The ministry said the dead were members of a cell responsible for a deadly attack on Christians two days earlier.

Forensic expert Pounder reviewed 20 photographs and said 11 of the bodies appeared to have been transported after the death, pointing to the presence of blood and marks in the middle of the sand.

He added that declines in the sand level suggest that two men were killed while they were kneeling, and images of other bodies were inconclusive.

An Egyptian judicial source said some policemen felt the courts were slow, prompting some officers to try to bring justice to themselves. "They are the ultimate justice of justice."

Police often transfer weapons and other objects to the scene to cover the executions, the source said. "It's the police who collect the information, and they certainly do not cooperate in information that will condemn their colleagues."

Criticism of my rights
The latest US State Department annual report on human rights in Egypt said in March that abuses included arbitrary or extrajudicial killings by the government or its men, enforced disappearance and torture.

However, Trump released $ 195 million in military aid to Egypt that it froze for reasons, including concerns about Egypt's human rights record, and US officials attribute it to security cooperation with Egypt as important to US national security.

The killings, described by Reuters as "extrajudicial executions, are a serious crime under international law," said Kate Venesuwaran, legal adviser to the Middle East and North Africa program of the International Commission of Jurists.

"There is evidence that bullets were fired at close range of victims" suggests that the use of lethal force was not a response to a legitimate threat but rather a premeditated deliberate behavior by the security forces to execute individuals outside the protection of the law.

"If the victims were civilians, it would be the classic murder of humanity, the killing of civilians in a widespread and systematic attack," said Kevin John Heller, professor of international criminal law at the University of Amsterdam.