Former Egyptian presidential candidate Ahmed Shafiq has publically admitted, for the first time, that the United Arab Emirates provided Egyptian security agencies and the Ministry of Interior with weapons and equipment in order to suppress protestors supporting President Mohammed Morsi.
This revelation drove a source close to an international legal team to announce to Asrar Arabiya media that an international court plans to prosecute a number of Sheikhs, princes, and senior officials in the UAE, along with General Al-Sisi and other Egyptian officials.
According to the source, an international legal team was formed after the Rabaa Al-Adawiyya and Al-Nahda massacres. The team has been collecting evidence over the past few weeks in order to file lawsuits in the countries that allow the prosecution of war criminals. The team is also collecting the necessary evidence to make a case against General Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi, his interior minister Mohammed Ibrahim, and a number of other Egyptian officials implicated in the massacres and the violations of human rights.
The source also told Asrar Arabiya that after the public announcements and clear admission of responsibility made by Shafiq, the international legal team is currently working on gathering the evidence needed to prosecute Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, his minister of interior, Sheikh Saif bin Zayed Al Nahyan, and the Commander in Chief of Dubai Police, Lieutenant General Dahi Khalfan. These prosecutions may also implicate other Emirati figures if there is evidence that they were involved in the massacres committed in Egypt.
Moreover, according to the source, the legal team will also call for ending the sale of all military equipment and tools of repression to the UAE. It has been proven that some of its equipment is purchased from Belgium, a member of the European Union and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the laws of which prohibit the sale of arms to human rights violators and war criminals.
Meanwhile, one of the lawyers involved in the case, Mr Tayab Ali, told MEMO that any European government selling arms to the UAE “should acknowledge that there’s an inherent conflict between strongly promoting arms exports to authoritarian regimes whilst strongly criticising their lack of human rights at the same time.” The lawyers are encouraging the responsible governments “to revoke all existing arms licenses to countries who routinely breach human rights.”
In regards to the confession, Shafiq, who currently lives in the UAE, revealed on 30th August during an interview with Egyptian television station Dream that the UAE had provided the Egyptian Ministry of Interior with weapons and equipment in order to suppress the protesters opposed to the military coup that occurred on 3 July 2013.
According to his statements, Shafiq was acting as a mediator between the UAE and Egypt in order to supply the coup’s military leaders with tools and weapons of repression that were later used to disperse the Rabaa Al-Adawiyya and Al-Nahda protests.
These statements explain the delay in the forceful dispersal of the Rabaa Al-Adawiyya and Al-Nahda protests. There was talk about it for over ten days, but it seems that the Egyptian security forces were simply waiting for the arrival of the UAE weapons in order to ensure that they could execute an effective suppression operation against the protestors, and that this operation would be strong enough to immediately end the protests.