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Egyptian authorities prevent June 30 fact-finding commission from traveling to Sinai

June 19, 2014 at 1:56 pm

The chairman of the fact-finding commission for the events of June 30, Fouad Riad, said on Wednesday that “the Egyptian security forces refused to allow committee members to travel to the border areas, especially the Sinai Peninsula and the province of Marsa Matrouh, to check the smuggling of weapons across the western border” under the pretext of “security precautions.”

In a statement to reporters on the side-lines of a meeting of the committee on Wednesday, Riad said that “the commission will request in its initial report, which will be sent to the presidency next weekend, President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi to ease the difficulties they are facing in their work, and put pressure on state institutions to collaborate more, in order to accomplish its final report by mid-September.”

Riad stressed that “the preliminary report will not include any results of the commission’s investigations, which are still ongoing, but that it will contain a summary of what the committee has accomplished since the start of its operations last December, and the constraints it has faced due to the lack of cooperation of some of state institutions with them, particularly security agencies.”

Riad indicated that “the commission reached an accurate count of the number of those killed in the dispersal of Rabaa Adaweyya and Al-Nahda sit-ins and events associated with them, after visiting all the hospitals that received victims, as well as drawing reports from the Forensic Medical Authority,” refusing to disclose the number reached by the committee either in the ranks of the protesters or those who allegedly died from the army and police forces.

The chairman of the committee welcomed the report by Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights on the events of Rabaa Adaweyya and Al-Nahda, which was received by the commission prior to publication in the media, adding that such conduct was a “serious gesture of cooperation by the rights group.”

He pointed out that “the commission’s final report will include accounts from two military personnel in the armed forces in a number of files, accounts from the leadership of the Police Force; and leaders of the Islamic movements will not be ignored too.”

The committee was formed following a decision by the former interim president Adly Mansour to prohibit Western countries from forming committees to inquire into the massacres that took place against dissidents in Egypt after the July 3 coup last year.

The committee has specified 10 events to work on, most notably the massacres of the Republican Guards, the Manassa (Memorial), Rabaa Adaweyya, Al-Nahda, and Sinai.

For his part, the secretary general of the committee, Chancellor Omar Marwan, said that “all the files the commission is investigating are still open, and final conclusions have not been reached yet,” adding that it “seeks to hold meetings with some leaders of the Islamic movements in general, not only those affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, held in a number of prisons, including Tora and Wadi Natrun prisons.”

Regarding the committee’s visiting of the deposed President, Mohamed Morsi, Marwan said: “the committee has decided to visit him, but has not yet determined the date of this visit,” stressing that “the visit does not aim at listening to his testimony on the events, but to ensure correct procedures are carried out inside prison.”