Stadium deaths part of ‘conspiracy’ to destabilize Egypt: PM

Prime Minister Ibrahim Mehleb stated that Sunday’s football tragedy, in which 22 Zamalak fans were killed outside the Air Force Stadium, was a “conspiracy” to destabilize Egypt’s upcoming economic conference.

Mehleb told the state-owned Middle East News Agency (MENA) that the deaths were a “conspiracy to hinder progress, compromise stability and destabilize Egypt’s upcoming economic conference,” reported the Reuters-affiliated Aswat Masreya. 

The deaths occurred during clashes between Zamalek’s hardcore football fans, the Ultras White Knights, and police forces outside the Air Force Stadium in New Cairo. State media reported that a number of fans lay in front of the bus transporting Zamalek football players to the stadium. Police then fired tear gas at the crowd, triggering a stampede as the fans tried to escape. The Ultras White Knights Facebook page said many of the victims died of suffocation.

Following the disaster, the Interior Ministry Spokesperson Hany Abdel Latif asserted that security forces are not responsible for the deaths of fans. In a phone interview with OnTV he said the clashes were a “deliberate” attempt to create a crisis. The privately owned Al-Dostour newspaper also quoted Latif saying that there were groups among the football fans who deliberately incited chaos so that people would die.

Al-Dostour suggested a conspiracy, reporting that security sources said members of the White Knights received money from Turkey, Qatar and the Muslim Brotherhood to destabilize Egypt.

President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi called on the authorities to investigate events and offered his condolences to the families of the victims, while urging that further precautions be taken to prevent future incidents, according to the state-owned Al-Ahram newspaper.

Political analyst Mohamed Naim told Mada Masr, in response to Mehleb’s comment: “They [the regime] act like fascists. I know it is sort of a dirty word, but they act like fascists. Fascism where everybody knows what happened and you can deny it 100 percent. Fascism where they can say these lies and people will even repeat them.”

He said that blaming violence on “conspiracies” was something that only the media used to do in Egypt, but now it appears government officials have taken up the habit.

Local news media in Egypt also seems to be shifting the blame for the football tragedy away from the Interior Ministry. The privately owned Al-Watan newspaper claimed that initial forensic reports showed the deaths were caused by a stampede and were not the direct result of bullets, Birdshot or tear gas. The privately owned Al- Masry Al-Youm newspaper quoted the Deputy Head of Cairo Security Khaled Metwally as saying that security forces put together an iron cage 20 hours before the match, to prevent the crowd from pushing on the doors.

According to Naim, half of what the media has presented to the people in the past year is “an obvious sort of brainwashing that is unprecedented here in Egypt or anywhere else.” He blamed the media’s attitude on fear and a desire to maintain connections with the current government.

Naim continued that it doesn’t matter how many witnesses or how much proof there is that security forces took part in violence, “the government still says it doesn’t know what happened. This happened with Shaimaa al-Sabbagh as well,” he added.

Sabbagh was killed while taking part in a small march in Talaat Harb that was bringing flowers to Tahrir Square to commemorate the martyrs of the revolution on the eve of its fourth anniversary. Following her death, the New York-based Human Rights Watch released a report saying evidence clearly shows that police shot Sabbagh.