14 August 2018•Update: 14 August 2018
CAIRO
At least 13 people have been arrested by the Egyptian authorities for calling for demonstrations marking the fifth anniversary of 2013’s Rabaa al-Adawiya massacre, according to Egypt’s Interior Ministry.
On Aug. 14, 2013, Egyptian security forces forcibly dispersed two major sit-in camps in Cairo’s Rabaa al-Adawaya Square and Giza’s Nahda Square.
The two camps had been set up some six weeks earlier, after Mohamed Morsi -- Egypt’s first freely-elected president and a Muslim Brotherhood leader -- had been ousted in a bloody military coup.
Estimates of the number of people killed in the sit-in dispersals range from the hundreds to the thousands.
In a Tuesday statement, the Interior Ministry said six of the 13 people arrested were members of the now-outlawed Muslim Brotherhood who had been holding a secret meeting in Giza.
The remaining seven were detained in Egypt’s northern Beheira province, the ministry said without providing a reason for their arrest.
“We received information that they had been planning to hold meetings… with the aim of provoking citizens to mark the fifth anniversary [of the sit-in dispersal] by staging demonstrations and sowing chaos,” the ministry statement read.
After Morsi’s ouster and imprisonment five years ago, Egypt’s post-coup authorities launched a relentless crackdown on dissent, killing hundreds and throwing thousands behind bars on violence-related charges.
Last month, Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi, a former army chief who led the 2013 coup, ruled out the notion of reconciling with the Brotherhood, accusing the group of engaging in “terrorism”.
