Rabaa Massacre Eyewitness Account-Tamer's Story

Rabaa Massacre Eyewitness Account-Tamer's Story

An eyewitness to the putschists' latest massacre tells the story of his good friend who died at the hands of security forces.

August 16, 2013

Mustafa was a friend of Tamer Magdy Shoaib. He relates that Tamer was a protestor in Rabaa Al-Adaweya Square. After 4:30pm, on August 14, Tamer’s family tried for hours to contact him, but to no avail. When finally someone answered the phone, the voice on the other side said they had found his phone next to the dead body of a man called Taha.

Family members decided to go and look for Tamer in Rabaa's field hospital. Once there, they searched through hundreds of bodies and found no trace of Tamer. They were told to go look for him in nearby Iman Mosque on Makram Ebeid Street, where they found bodies being collected by mourning families. Tamer’s family eventually found their son, a dead and bloodied corpse. They found four bullets in his body.

From 2am ‘till 4pm (fourteen hours), Tamer’s family waited in Iman Mosque, which was full of corpses that needed to be buried. However, they could not be buried without a coroner's report and a burial permit, which the government and police refused to issue. Officials were telling families they had to write statements saying that their murdered family members in fact died from natural causes or committed suicide.

There were hundreds of corpses in the mosque and only two doctors to issue the necessary reports. Bodies lay in the mosque in Egypt’s scorching August heat, and soon the smell of death reached the streets. People had to purchase and use ice-blocks to preserve the bodies.

Mustafa said, that if it wasn't for them being there since 2am, bringing along a lawyer as well as many relatives and friends to pressure the doctors, they wouldn't have been successful in getting the real coroner report.

He said Tamer was a good citizen, a helpful friend and a moderate, well-balanced person. "Everyone who met him loved him", stated Mustafa. Tamer Magdy Shoaib was a 40 year-old resident of Cairo and a father of three children.

ENDS

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