London – 14 August 2016
(Ikshef) – Today 14 August 2016 marks the third anniversary of the bloody dispersal of sit-in of supporters of Egyptian civilian president Mohammed Morsi in the eastern Cairo region of Rabi’a, among its victims were the four journalists Ahmed Abdul-Jawad of Al-Akhbar newspaper, Musaab Al-Shami of Rassd network, Habiba Abdul-Aziz of UAE Gulf News and Mike Dean of Sky New.
Despite the passage of three years of the killing of these journalists while doing their job covering the events of bloody dispersal, none of the killers was brought to justice so far. This encouraged the killing of more Egyptian journalists later during their field coverage, so that the number is over ten killed journalists now.
An earlier report by Human Rights Watch identified ten senior Egyptian officials as key defendants of the massacre in which the four journalists were killed among others. However those officials are still at large until now, and Egyptian judiciary did not move to call and try them. This leads us to renew our previous demands of an international criminal trial for these murderers to let all criminals receive punishment.
We also announce joining all international bodies demanding the formation of an international inquiry commission into the events of the Rabi’a massacre. While we stand up for journalists and freedoms in general, we at the same time demand criminal prosecution of journalists who instigated the killing of the protesters in the sit-in, an agitation which also caused the death of four of their colleagues beside thousands of other citizens.
