25 January 2016•Update: 25 January 2016
CAIRO
The fifth anniversary of Egypt’s 2011 popular uprising on Monday saw the arrest of 37 protesters and the death of three people at the hands of security forces, according to a local human rights activist.
Ezzat Ghoneim, head of the Egyptian Coordination for Rights and Freedoms, a local NGO, told Anadolu Agency that 37 people had been arrested by the Egyptian authorities on Monday in the provinces of Cairo, Minya, Qalioubiya, Dakhaliya, Sharqiyah, Kafr al-Sheikh and Beheira.
Ghoneim noted that the total number of Egyptians arrested this month alone stood at 872.
He said they were arrested for staging "unlicensed demonstrations", belonging to an outlawed group (the Muslim Brotherhood) and planning demonstrations marking the uprising’s anniversary.
His organization, he added, had also documented the death of three people on the uprising’s anniversary, two of them in the 6 October district and the third in the district of Kerdaseh.
Both districts are in Egypt’s Giza province.
The Interior Ministry, for its part, reported that the three had been killed in two separate exchanges of fire with security forces.
Ghoneim, however, said he had information indicating that the three had been executed extra-judicially by security forces.
A Monday statement issued by the Interior Ministry stated that Mohammed Abdul Hamid Abdul Aziz, a member of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood group, had been killed in an exchange of fire with security forces in an apartment in Kirdaseh.
According to the ministry, Abdul Aziz had been wanted by the authorities for having allegedly committed acts of violence.
Another two people were killed on Monday in an apartment in Giza’s 6 October district -- again, reportedly during an exchange of fire with police.
The Interior Ministry said they, too, had been wanted for committing past acts of violence.
The Muslim Brotherhood has yet to comment on the reports, but the group has said in the past that -- since Egypt’s 2013 military coup -- the security forces have routinely executed its members in cold blood.
