CAIRO
Relatives of slain supporters of ousted President Mohamed Morsi faced endless hurdles before finalizing the paperwork needed to bury their loved ones who were killed in the bloody dispersal of Rabaa al-Adawiya sit-in.
Some of the families and friends said they were pressured by security authorities to write false reasons on the death certificates required before they could bury their slain relatives.
Mahmoud Said saw the body of his son Mohamed on television, with a shot in the head.
"I took his body from Iman Mosque and went to the police station to get a report so that I can obtain a burial permit," he told the Anadolu Agency.
"The officer told me that I should write suicide as the cause of my son death," he added, tearfully.
"My son came from Alexandria to Cairo to commit suicide?! I took the body back to the mosque and we stayed there until a medical team came and finalized the procedures."
Hundreds of bodies of protesters killed during the dispersal of the Rabaa sit-in were taken to Iman Mosque, hundreds of meters away from the Rabaa Square.
Hisham Khalil, a relative of Mahmoud Ahmed Saad, shot in the head, lamented a similar attempt to cover up the real cause of his death.
"The authorities wrote he was killed in a car accident, and we refused to sign the papers," he told the AA.
"We stayed hours with the body in Iman makeshift hospital until the report was fixed."
Khalil was in the mosque when security forces stormed it late Thursday and forced all people out.
According to witnesses, the security forces allowed only un-bearded people to leave the mosque, while those sporting beards were held inside.
"Was it not enough for them to kill our loved ones? Did they have to attack the relatives of the martyrs too?"
Many families and friends had to take the bodies of their loves one to Zeinhom mortuary to obtain burial permits.
However, dozens of bodies were still lying in the street outside the morgue after officials said the facility had reached full capacity.
Anguished family members and friends placed blocks of ice on the bodies to protect them from decaying because of the simmering heat.
Mohamed Meselhi, who arrived at the morgue to help finalize the burial procedures of his friend Gamal al-Sherif, who was shot in the head, told the AA that the morgue refused to take the body.
"This left us in quite a dilemma. Should we bury him without a permit, which would mean giving up his right and covering up the crime committed by [military chief Abdel-Fattah] al-Sisi and the coup plotters or should we continue to wait until we obtain a burial permit?"
Al-Sherif said medics and lawyers eventually managed to reach an understanding with the Health Ministry to obtain the permits.
"But this took so much time to happen. Where were human rights organizations?"
