Update - Egypt Probe Blames Brotherhood For Post-Morsi Violence

A state-appointed panel of inquiry has blamed the Muslim Brotherhood for most of the violence that followed last year's military ouster of Mohamed Morsi, Egypt's first freely elected president.



Fouad Riyad, a former judge and head of the panel, announced on Wednesday that 703 people had been killed – including ten policemen – during the violent dispersal of two pro-Morsi protest encampments in Cairo's Rabaa and Nahda squares on August 14 of last year.



The panel also accused the Brotherhood and its supporters of standing behind a string of attacks on Egyptian churches following the twin dispersal operations.



It also blamed Morsi supporters for deadly clashes with security forces outside Republican Guard headquarters in Cairo on July 8 of last year, in which 61 people were killed and 435 injured, according to official figures.



The panel reiterated previous claims by Egyptian authorities that the state was not holding any "political detainees" and that torture was not being practiced inside the nation's prisons.



It called on Egyptian security forces to reconsider their use of rubber bullets to disperse protests, noting that the practice had resulted in "numerous cases" of eyesight loss and permanent disabilities.



It also called on the Egyptian authorities to amend controversial legislation issued one year ago that allows police to use force to break up "unauthorized" demonstrations.



Two leaders of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, for their part, denounced the report's findings.



"This biased report is just a charade," Brotherhood leader Gamal Heshmat told The Anadolu Agency.



"It is only meant to give the appearance of a fact-finding probe in order to preempt our calls for an international investigation of the massacres," he said.



Riyad claimed that Brotherhood leaders and their allies who had organized the twin sit-ins had refused to heed "domestic and international" calls to end the demonstration and had supplied protesters with weapons.



The panel further asserted that armed protesters had fired first at security forces, prompting the latter to clear the twin sit-ins in a bloody, day-long dispersal operation.



The panel, appointed last December by then-interim president Adly Mansour, also blamed the violence on a "lack of focus" on the part of Egyptian security forces, which, the panel said, had resulted in greater casualties during the dispersal of the larger sit-in in Cairo's Rabaa al-Adawiya Square.



The report's criticisms, however, were a far cry from those made in an earlier report by New York-based Human Rights Watch, which accused Egyptian security forces of carrying out the "systematic" murder of over 1,000 pro-Morsi protesters in the one year following Morsi's ouster.



These included at least 817 protesters who were gunned down during last summer's dispersal of the Rabaa Square sit-in.



The HRW report, released in August following a year-long investigation, concluded that the killings by Egyptian security forces had likely constituted "crimes against humanity."



Mohamed Soudan, a leading member of the Brotherhood's now-dissolved Freedom and Justice Party, said the report – which also blamed the Brotherhood for other violent episodes that have taken place since Morsi's ouster – failed to highlight the government's ongoing crackdown on Morsi supporters.



"The report said nothing about girls who have been raped inside police vehicles and in detention centers, nor did it mention the 92 regime opponents who have died in police custody in recent months," Soudan told AA by phone, defending the Brotherhood's decision not to cooperate with the state-appointed panel over suspicions regarding its independence and integrity.



In the summer of last year, Morsi supporters staged major sit-ins in Cairo's Rabaa al-Adawiya and Nahda squares to protest the elected leader's ouster – after a single year in office – by the army.



The state-run National Council for Human Rights has said that the violent dispersal of the twin sit-ins had left 632 people, including eight policemen, dead.



Other local and international human rights groups, however, say the total death toll from last August's sit-in dispersals had exceeded 1,000.



Earlier this week, President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi – who is widely regarded as the architect of Morsi's ouster and subsequent imprisonment – received the 800-page report from members of the fact-finding panel.



He has since submitted the document to Egypt's cabinet "for review."



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