SHAFAQNA – Egyptian security forces are accused to be involved in campaign of extrajudicial killings of detainees, routinely masked as shootouts with alleged terrorists, according to a new report by Human Rights Watch. The report details what it alleges are a pattern of extrajudicial assassinations between 2015 and last year, a period in which the Egyptian interior ministry said publicly that 755 people were killed in alleged exchanges of fire with security forces, while naming just 141.
For its new report, HRW analysed nine of the incidents the Egyptian government claimed were shootouts, in which 75 alleged militants were killed. It interviewed relatives of 14 of the named individuals killed and conducted forensic analysis of pictures and video of the killings made available by the authorities. In all 14 cases, family members of the deceased claimed that their relative was in police custody before the alleged shootout took place. Most told HRW that they had witnessed the arrest, and said they had extreme difficulty obtaining information about the death or the body.
The rights group said that the cases its researchers analysed led them to conclude that the individuals killed “at the moment of their deaths apparently posed no life-threatening danger to security forces or others, and so amounted to deliberate and unlawful killings”. “All evidence indicates that these were probable extrajudicial executions that represent a broader pattern,” HRW claims in its report. “Under the pretext of combating terrorism, President Abdel Fatah Al-Sisi’s government has effectively given the interior ministry’s police and national security agency free rein to suppress all opposition, including peaceful dissent, with near-absolute impunity for grave abuses,” said the rights group.
The Egyptian government is routinely one of the world’s largest arms importers, receiving weapons from around the world, including more than £24m in openly licensed sales from the UK in the past three years. Egypt continues to receive $1.3bn (£950m) annually in military aid from the US, despite mounting pressure on Joe Biden to stick to his campaign promises of “no more blank checks” to the country. In February, the Biden administration approved a $200m arms sale to Egypt. “The US relationship with Egypt is an anomaly,” said Michele Dunne, of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Congress is expected to state imminently whether it will override restrictions imposed on up to $300m of the $1.3bn arms deal because of human rights concerns.
Source: The Guardian