President orders further enquiry into Rabea violence

Interim President Adly Mansour ordered the appointment of an investigations judge to look into the result of the National Council for Human Rights (NCHR) report on the violent dispersal of the Rabea sit in, state-owned Al-Ahram newspaper reported Thursday.

Mansour sent a report to the minister of justice to appoint the investigations judge, who will be tasked with independently investigating all violence associated with the dispersal of the pro-Muslim Brotherhood protest camp in August last year.

NCHR revealed videos showing police abuses during the dispersal of the Rabea al-Adaweya sit-in at a press conference Monday, which it did not include in previous releases.

According to the report, 624 civilians and eight policemen were killed during the dispersal.

Monday’s press conference revealed multiple videos that had not been shown at the earlier presser. In addition to previous videos evidencing the use of arms and torture by sit-in participants, the NCHR showed videos of snipers shooting at demonstrators from the roof of a nearby military building, police officers abusing unarmed detainees, and bulldozers running over the bodies of killed demonstrators.

Council members denied that the inclusion of the new videos was in response to criticism by at least two members that did not participate in the presentation of the findings.

Meanwhile, the Anti-Coup Alliance held a press conference Wednesday in Istanbul responding to NCHR's report.

The alliance, a pro-Brotherhood coalition established after Morsi’s ouster, put the death toll from the dispersal at 1182, adding that doctors, paramedics and journalists were among the dead. Five thousand were injured and 350 remain missing, they assert.

The Anti Coup Alliance tried to organize a similar presser on Tuesday, but security forces raided the headquarters of Al-Isteklal political party where the presser was planned to take place.

The Freedom and Justice online portal reported that the NCHR report was supportive of the current government and “aimed to confuse the facts and mislead.”

Ikhwanweb, the Muslim Brotherhood’s official English online site, described the NCHR report as “full of lies” and said that the “coup commander” responsible for the deaths at Rabea “will blame each of his collaborators personally for committing these massacres in an attempt to evade legal prosecution at home and abroad.”