Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi and his accompanying delegation performed Umrah rituals on Sunday and the Holy Kaaba was opened in honor of him after his meeting with King Abdullah.
Al-Sisi was in Jeddah in an official visit to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The accompanying delegation included Sameh Shoukry, the foreign minister and Hesham Ash-Sherif, the head of the president office.
Saudi Arabia is said to have encourage al-Sisi to overthrow ex President Mursi of the Muslim Brotherhood last year and has largely bankrolled Egypt since.
Al Sisi said the Muslim Brotherhood was leading the country to disaster and he had the Egyptian public’s backing for Mursi’s removal.
But in a recent report Human Rights Watch said Egyptian security forces intentionally killed at least 817 protesters during last August’s Rabaa massacre, in a premeditated attack equal to or worse than China’s Tiananmen Square killings in 1989.
The investigation was based on interviews with 122 survivors and witnesses and found that Egypt’s police and army “systematically and deliberately killed largely unarmed protesters on political grounds” in actions that “likely amounted to crimes against humanity”.
The report recommends that several senior individuals within Egypt’s security apparatus be investigated and, where appropriate, held to account for their role in the planning of both the Rabaa massacre and others that occurred last summer– including al-Sisi, Egypt’s then defence minister and new president.
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As head of the army at the time, al-Sisi had overall responsibility for the army’s role at Rabaa, and has publicly acknowledged spending “very many long days to discuss all the details”.
The Rabaa massacre, which took place a year ago on Thursday, accompanied the dispersal of a six-week-old encampment in Cairo set up by demonstrators protesting the overthrow of President Mohamed Mursi.
But HRW concluded that the camp’s estimated 85,000 members were not given enough time to leave before troops started firing; were prevented for most of the day from leaving via safe exits; and used firearms “in only a few instances, which do not justify the grossly disproportionate and premeditated lethal attacks on overwhelmingly peaceful protesters”.
