Cairo airport website hacked as Egyptians mark massacre

The number of people killed in the dispersal of Rabaa al-Adaweya and Nahda sit-ins August 14, 2015 exceeded 600 persons, according to state-owned National Council for Human Rights.

The website of Cairo’s airport has been hacked as Egyptians marked the second anniversary of the mass killing of demonstrators in the capital.

But rights groups have said police used disproportionate force, killing many unarmed protesters in what Human Rights Watch said “probably amounted to crimes against humanity”. An Associated Press investigation last year showed that commanders gave security forces virtual carte blanche to use deadly force after accusations the protesters were armed. No official has been charged and details of a government-appointed fact-finding mission set up in 2013 have not been publicized. Police provided no safe exit and fired on many who tried to escape. Egyptian officials at the time said they would not mind welcoming the Brotherhood if it renounced violence.

He said authorities had issued warnings days before dispersing the Islamist protesters, adding that security forces had to respond with force after coming under fire from protesters.

Human Rights Watch and the Paris-based worldwide Federation for Human Rights both criticized Egypt for resisting impartial inquiries into the suppression of dissent.

The bloody dispersal unleashed a wave of revenge attacks targeting government offices and churches. “It was a violent crackdown planned at the highest levels of the Egyptian government”.

Two years later, no policemen have faced trial over the incident, but leaders and members of Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood have. Morsi is in prison and faces the death penalty- a verdict he can still appeal. In fact, one can not but question the timing of the Qatari offer which came just after Egypt celebrated the inauguration of its new Suez Canal, an achievement which has been the subject of a childish propaganda campaign by the Brotherhood supporters who mocked it as insignificant.

Cairo was swarming with Western delegations who visited Egypt in an attempt to reach a political settlement between the military-backed government and the ousted Brotherhood on the grounds that it was still possible to involve the Islamist group in the country’s political process if they accepted the political roadmap.

“There is no one but them out (there)”, he said.