International law expert says Sisi could be in big trouble

A Lebanese professor of international law, Tariq Shandab, said the new report issued by Human Rights Watch about the Rabaa massacre has both moral value and legal significance, because it confirms all the previous reports issued by international organisations that have accused the current Egyptian president, Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi, along with other Egyptian officials, of committing “massacres”.

Shandab reportedly said in remarks to Al-Jazeera television that the report singled out specific suspects accused of killing people in order to seize power.

He pointed out that now it is up to the UN Human Rights Council and international justice not to let anyone get away with what he has done with impunity.

According to Al-Mesryoon newspaper, Shandab said what was done by the security forces in the Rabaa Square represents a violent crackdown by the Egyptian authorities, which committed “the largest massacre in modern human history”, stressing that these atrocious crimes fall within the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court.

He said the statute of the international tribunal authorises the Attorney General to pursue any suspects who are accused of such dangerous crimes, even in non-ICC member states.

Human Rights Watch said in a report issued on 12 August that the Egyptian security forces practiced “systematic murder” and committed crimes against humanity, killing about 1,150 demonstrators in July and August of 2013.

According to the report, which is based on investigations that lasted a full year, while breaking up the peaceful pro-Morsi sit-in in Rabaa Square on 14 August of last year, the Egyptian security forces carefully followed a plan that led to the death of at least 817 people, wounding more than a thousand.

The 188 page report titled “All according to plan: The Rabaa massacre and mass killings of protesters in Egypt” documents how the police and the army systematically fired live ammunition into crowds of demonstrators who opposed the army’s ousting of President Mohammed Morsi on 3 July, during six demonstrations between 5 July and 17 August.

Al-Mesryoon newspaper quoted the rights organisation’s executive director, Kenneth Roth, as saying that the security forces carried out “one of the largest killings of demonstrators in a single day in the history of the modern world,” adding that the “violent crackdown [was] orchestrated by the highest levels of the Egyptian government.”