By Kevin Kim
Impunity Watch Reporter, Middle East

CAIRO, Egypt – Five Egyptian and international human rights groups urged President Hosni Mubarak to set up an independent judicial committee to reinvestigate the December 30, 2005 police assault on Sudanese protestors that resulted 27 deaths.

The killings occurred when a force of nearly 4,000 Egyptian police and security officers attacked a makeshift camp erected by Sudanese refugees, asylum seekers, and migrants who had engaged in peaceful sit-in protest for past several months in front of the offices of the UN refugee agency. The protestors were demanding resettlement in a third country because of Egypt’s harsh living conditions and discriminations against them. According to media report at the time, police fired water canons at the crowd and beat them indiscriminately. The assault left 27 dead and dozens injured, including women and children.

Two years had gone by since the incident, yet no police officer has been charged for any crime. Initial investigation into the incident led by Dokki Prosecution Office found no evidence of police or official misconduct. Despite arresting hundreds of Sudanese refugees during the assault, investigators interviewed only one woman. Four eyewitnesses they did interview testified that the protestors themselves initiated the violence. Moreover, forensic experts claimed that serious head injuries from “stampede” led to many of the deaths rather than police “use of excessive force in assaulting them.” As a result, many of the arrested protestors were charged instead with crimes of manslaughter, unintended injury, resisting the authorities, and the deliberate destruction of property.

The five groups – Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch (HRW), the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR), Hisham Mubarak Law Center, and the Nadim Center for Rehabilitation of Victims of Violence – accused the Egyptian government of exercising “concerted effort to absolve the police of any wrongdoing.” Calling the public prosecutor’s total exoneration of the police lacking any semblance of credibility, the rights groups called on President Mubarak to use the second anniversary of the incident to “initiate a complete and transparent investigation of what really took place.”

For more information, please see:

Afriquenligne – Egyptian rights groups seek new probe of Sudanese refugees incident – 31 December 2007

AFP – Rights groups slam Egypt probe into Sudan refugee deaths – 30 December 2007

Human Rights Watch – New investigation needed into assault on Sudanese protestors – 29 December 2007