CAIRO: A military eyewitness, Fahmy Abdel Aziz, has come forward claiming that he saw detained Egyptian activist Alaa Abdel Fattah dump weapons into the Nile River and assault members of the Egyptian military on the night of the deadly October 9 Maspero protest, when a military assault on a Coptic Christian march left 27 civilians dead and around 300 injured. Abdel Fattah was put under military detention on October 31, pending an investigation into these charges. Activists have condemned the testimony, which came over two weeks since Alaa's detention and court summoning, as untrue. Meanwhile, international human rights groups have chimed in to demand the immediate release of the detained blogger. “Instead of identifying which members of the military were driving the military vehicles that crushed 13 Coptic protesters, the military prosecutor is going after the activists who organized the march,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “Abdel Fattah's detention is a blatant effort to target one of the most vocal critics of the military. The prosecutor's acts further entrench military impunity by failing to build public confidence that there will be a transparent investigation of those responsible for the deaths,” she continued. The witness Abdel Aziz claims that he saw Abdel Fattah and several friends assaulting a soldier. He claims that the group then confiscated his weapon, and alleges that Abdel Fattah then ran to the Nile and threw the weapon into it. Abdel Aziz also claimed that he saw various members of the 6th of April Youth Movement, the Maspero Youth Union, as well as the prominent Egyptian bloggers Basaa Saber and Wael Abbas with Abdel Fattah. Abbas quickly dismissed this claim on his Twitter account, announcing that he was at a conference in Tunisia on the night of the Maspero violence. BM
