CAIRO – A judicial body, affiliated to Egypt's Ministry of Justice, which is investigating the violence on February 2, dubbed the Battle of the Camel, revealed on Thursday that the ex-speaker of Shura Council, Safwat el-Sherif, was the mastermind behind the battle, the official Middle East News Agency (MENA) reports. According to the report of the body, el-Sherif organised marches and demonstrations in co-operation with some members of the People's Assembly and the Shura Council, with the purposes of killing protesters in Tahrir Square, supporting Hosni Mubarak, last February. El-Sherif hired a number of thugs and outlaws to forcefully disperse the protesters, inciting his loyalists to rush into the Square in order to frighten away the protesters. The report said that el-Sherif ordered some of former officials in the now dissolved National Democratic Party to organise marches in Moustafa Mahmoud Square in Mohandiseen, Abdel-Moneim Riyadh Square and Maspero, moving from there to Tahrir to cause chaos and end the protests. Some of the former parliamentarians rode the camels and horses themselves and started to hit the protesters, injuring hundreds of them, according to eyewitnesses in Tahrir. El-Sherif's plan was to evacuate the Square at once and by any means, even if many protesters were injured, according to the eyewitnesses. He said that the demonstrators had a foreign agenda and had been hired by some disloyal people who were trying to destabilise Egypt. The thugs he hired hit protesters with rocks, stones, swords and whips. They also shot at them. During the battle, eyewitnesses were quoted in the report as seeing snipers, on 6th October Bridge and the buildings surrounding the Square, shooting at unarmed protesters. The report said that some of these thugs were arrested by eyewitnesses and that they turned out to have been hired by the ex-speaker of the People's Assembly, Ahmed Fathi Sorour, and former MPs Ragab Hemeida, Mohamed Abul Einein, Mohamed Ouda, Ahmed Sheiha, Ali Radwan and Abdel-Nasser el-Gabri.
