Conflicting reports about Brotherhood sit-in violence

As violence that erupted Monday night around the Muslim Brotherhood sit-in at Nahda Square waned in the early hours of Tuesday, Islamists and their opponents exchanged accusations as to who started it and who was killed.

Laila Soueif, an activist and professor at Cairo University, was at the site of the clashes on Monday night. In her account posted on her Facebook page, she explained that she was walking with a group of Giza residents near Cairo University, close to the sit-in, when they were shot at from the building of the Faculty of Agriculture.

“We saw the bullets reaching the ground and we ran backward. People were screaming, Abdel Dayem has died, Abdel Dayem has died.” 

Dayem, Soueif said, worked in a nearby coffeehouse and is well known in the neighbourhood.

Dayem’s name does not figure, however, in the list of “martyrs” published by the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice portal, which claimed that five of its supporters were killed in the clashes.

According to Ministry of Health sources, there were six casualties.

Hossam Eddin Mahmoud al-Bedawy, who is from the nearby neighbourhood of Omraneya, is among those listed as killed by Muslim Brotherhood opponents on the Freedom and Justice portal.

The portal claims that killers carried and paraded Bedawy’s dead body. A photo of his body was posted by pro-Brotherhood social media users.

Anti-Brotherhood Twitter users, however, posted an older photo which they say is of Bedawy. In this photo, Bedawy poses with his children at a demonstration in front of a poster that describes the Brotherhood as liars.

Mada Masr could not confirm that the same Bedawy figures in both photos, although the faces do look similar.

A friend of Bedawy’s wife, speaking to Mada Masr on condition of anonymity, said that Bedawy’s family, alongside her own, had been going to protests against now deposed President Mohamed Morsi at the Ettehadiya Presidential Palace.

A resident of Giza, he went to check what was happening on hearing the gunfire with his step brother, she told Mada Masr.

"Hossam and his family have nothing to do with the Brotherhood. We are revolutionaries and we won't let them claim that he is their martyr," she said.

Soueif explained that the residents who were shot at were unarmed and that shooting was coming from various directions including the university and the nearby zoo.

This is not the first time that the Nahda sit-in turns into violent clashes with residents in the area, who have reported seeing members of the sit-in carrying arms.

Clashes that erupted in the area immediately following President Mohamed Morsi’s ouster by the military on July 3 ended with the death of several people, including local residents.