Egypt charges 379 with murder over 2013 Cairo unrest

Egyptian prosecutors pressed murder charges against 379 people on Wednesday over the deaths of policemen and civilians during the bloody dispersal of Islamist protest camps in the capital in 2013.

It was not immediately clear how many of the defendants were in custody but it was the latest in a string of controversial mass trials to be announced over the violence that followed the army’s overthrow of Islamist president Mohammed Morsi in July that year.

Prosecutors charge that the defendants took part in an “armed sit-in” at the capital’s Nahda Square in August 2013, and in “armed marches that attacked civilians” in several parts of Cairo.

“Their action resulted in casualties among policemen and civilians,” a prosecution statement said.

Cairo’s Nahda and Rabaa squares were the locations of protest camps set up by Morsi’s supporters that were broken up by police on August 14, 2013 at the cost of hundreds of lives.

Human Rights Watch described it at the time as “one of the largest killings of demonstrators in a single day in recent history.”

Prosecutors charged that during the dispersal of the Nahda Square protest camp the defendants used “force and violence against the police”.

“This led to the killing of two policemen and wounding of 27 others,” they said.

Other charges pressed against the defendants include illegal imprisonment and torture, forcibly resisting the security forces, weapons possession, occupying public property and blocking public transport.