Omar Marawan, spokesman of the committee formed by interim president Adli Mansour to investigate the violence that followed Mohamed Morsi's ouster, says a final meeting is due to be held today. Marawan told parliamentary reporters on Monday that the committee had expected to meet for the last time on 16 November but “decided to extend its work to 20 November after “foreign agencies contacted us and offered to provide new information about the disruption of the two Muslim Brotherhood sit-ins in Rabaa Al-Adawiya in Cairo and Al-Nahda Square in Giza in August last year”. According to Marawan today's meeting will decide whether this new information is valuable. “Our experts are reviewing the information so that the committee can take a decision during the final meeting on Thursday,” said Marawan. “Once a decision is made we can set a date for the publication of the committee's report which will probably be announced in a press conference next week.” Local media, foreign correspondents and representatives of human rights organisations will be invited to attend the conference, expected to be held in parliament's main chamber or in the 25th January Revolution Hall. Marawan promised the committee's report will be “politically neutral and impartial”. “The report will not seek to satisfy one party at the expense of another,” said Marawan. “It aims to draw an accurate picture of the violence that occurred in Egypt, drawing on documents and reliable and accurate sources.” Iskandar Ghattas, chairman of the mini-committee charged with drafting the final report, told Al-Ahram Weekly “the report will be completely different from the one issued in summer by the US-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) which basically produced a list of charges against the Egyptian government.” HRW's report about the dispersal of the Brotherhood sit-ins, issued on 12 August, 2014, was published under the title “All According to Plan: Rabaa Massacre and the Mass Killing of Protestors in Egypt”. The report was condemned by the Egyptian government which accused HRW of bias. Ghattas said the committee's final report will be divided into five parts. “The first will comprise a preface, highlighting the committee's methods in investigating and researching events and its degree of neutrality,” said Ghattas. The second, entitled “The Road to 30 June”, will offer a brief examination of events leading to mass protests against former president Mohamed Morsi on 30 June. The most important part of the report, entitled “Gatherings and sit-ins in public squares and roads in Egypt”, documents four major events: the dispersal of Muslim Brotherhood's sit-ins on 14 August, 2013, in which hundreds of Morsi supporters, and policemen, were killed. “It also,” says Ghattas, “covers clashes in front of the Republican Guard headquarters on 8 July, five days after Morsi's removal, and clashes between security forces and pro-Morsi supporters on the nearby Nasr Street on 26 July.” Part four covers attacks against Coptic Christians in Upper Egypt after the dispersals and the eruption of violence in North Sinai and in Egyptian universities and prisons. Each chapter ends with a number of recommendations while the fifth chapter, says Ghattas, will entirely comprise recommendations for the government and civil society to adopt. Marawan said on Monday that “the report presented different points of view about the above events, including testimonies and documents provided by senior police and army officials and testimonies delivered by Muslim Brotherhood officials to Human Rights Watch and to other sources, including the Qatari-based Al-Jazeera satellite channel”. Muslim Brotherhood leaders refused to testify before the committee which they accuse of bias and being a tool to polish the image of “the military coup regime”. A source within the committee says “the report includes credible evidence about who began the shooting when security forces came to disrupt the Brotherhood sit-ins”. The Ministry of Interior says the forced dispersals claimed the lives of around 800, 100 of them police personnel. In its report HWR said “in the August 14 dispersal of the Rabaa Al-Adawiya sit-in alone security forces killed a minimum of 817 people and more likely at least 1,000”. Mohamed Fayek, chairman of the National Council for Human Rights (NCHR), told Al-Ahram that “the Council provided the post-Morsi fact-finding committee with a lot of accurate information about the dispersals and the attacks against Christians in Upper Egypt and elsewhere”. “This information, which took the form of personal testimonies about the dispersals, documents about the number of victims, and video footage and photos, offers a very different picture from that presented by Human Rights Watch,” claims Fayek. The Muslim Brotherhood's refusal to testify before either the NCHR or the fact-finding committee, says Fayek, is part of a strategy that seeks to exploit events in its international campaign against the new regime in Egypt. “They fear the committee will uncover facts about the events that will not serve their battle against the Egyptian government.” The report takes Islamists to task for their attacks on Christians in the immediate aftermath, says the committee source. It also accuses them of murdering tens of police and army personnel in North Sinai and other Egyptian governorates. “The post-dispersal attacks against Egyptian Christians and their places of worship were part of a systematic and well-organised campaign that was orchestrated by Islamists,” he says. “These Islamists were members of the Muslim Brotherhood, helped by leaders of Al-Gamaa Al-Islamiya, particularly in Upper Egyptian governorates.” “Previous attacks against Christians in Egypt had been scattered and mounted on an individual basis. The ones which immediately followed the dispersals were clearly prompted on sectarian grounds and orchestrated across 17 governorates.” Fayek says information provided by the NCHR to the fact-finding committee clearly showed the wave of anti-Christian attacks that followed the dispersals aimed to destroy and plunder churches and monasteries and raze the houses and other properties — grocery shops, bookstores, jewelry shops, orphanages, self-help societies and cars — of Christians.” Useful information was provided by NCHR, says the source, “yet more was provided by priests and bishops who were serving in churches and monasteries in Upper Egypt in the summer of 2013”. Even so “a number of Christians refused to testify before the committee out of fear they would face revenge attacks from Islamist militants”. The report documents several speeches from Brotherhood figures that incited violence against Christians. On attacks in North Sinai and other terror operations the report, a preliminary copy of which was submitted to president Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi on 2 November, singles out Brotherhood leader Mohamed Al-Beltagui for inciting violence against military personnel. It also points to increased cooperation between jihadist groups, particularly Ansar Beit Al-Maqdis and the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), also known as the Islamic State (IS). “We have hundreds of documents showing how the two groups reached an agreement to step up terrorist attacks against army and security personnel following the removal of Morsi,” says the source.
