Year after Cairo carnage, Sisi turns page on Arab Spring

CAIRO, Aug 12, (AFP): A year after a bloody Cairo crackdown, President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has tightened his grip on Egypt, crushed the Muslim Brotherhood, jailed top opponents and turned the page on the Arab Spring, critics say.
On August 14, 2013, after Sisi ousted Egypt's first freely elected president, Mohamed Morsi, the security forces launched a crackdown on thousands of his supporters at protest camps in Cairo's Rabaa al-Adawiya and Nahda squares that left hundreds dead.
The assault was "one of the largest killings of demonstrators in a single day in recent history," said New York-based Human Rights Watch in a report released Tuesday to mark the anniversary.
In Rabaa al-Adawiya alone, at least 817 people were killed, it said, calling for top officials to be investigated for likely "crimes against humanity".
According to an AFP correspondent who was at the square, more than 100 protesters were killed several hours into the crackdown.
Police said eight policemen also died in Rabaa, from a total of 42 policemen killed across Egypt that day.
The crackdown was launched after thousands of pro-Morsi supporters refused to end their sit-ins despite repeated warnings by the interim authorities installed by Sisi, who at the time was army chief.
Since then, more than 1,400 people have been killed in street clashes, including in the Rabaa carnage, over 15,000 jailed including Morsi and the top leadership of his Muslim Brotherhood, and over 200 sentenced to death in speedy trials.
The authorities have also dissolved the Brotherhood's political arm, the Freedom and Justice Party, since Sisi became Egypt's second democratically elected president following a landslide victory in a May vote.
"Sisi has succeeded in eliminating most opposition within Egypt to his rule," said James Dorsey of the Singapore-based S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies.