A senior Egyptian judge claimed on Sunday that more than 7,000 civilians have been killed in the country since the coup which overthrew President Mohamed Morsi last July. Judge Mohamed Gharib said that most of the dead were killed by security forces and that he has filed complaints against named army and police officers who carried out the killings for Egyptian courts to investigate.
The judge, who is a member of the legal defence team for the ousted president, made his comments on Al-Jazeera’s evening show Hadith Al-Thawra. He offered harsh criticism of the Egyptian judiciary and accused it of being biased against those citizens who are against the coup.
To back-up his claim, he pointed out that court officials have been very quick to issue rules against school pupils who own balloons or school kits with the Rabaa Al-Adawiyya four-finger symbol on them, while the same courts have not even started investigations over the killing of 7,000 Egyptians.
In an ironic act of self-fulfilling prophecy, on Sunday an Egyptian criminal court accused Morsi and other politicians, journalists, activists and parliamentarians of having “contempt” for the judiciary. For Morsi, this is the fourth accusation against him. The Muslim Brotherhood, observers and anti-coup politicians and activists called the accusations “completely political” and accused the Egyptian judiciary of being a “puppet in the hands of the army”.