Egypt Security Kills 36 Held in Its Custody
CAIRO — The Egyptian government acknowledged that its security forces had killed 36 Islamists in its custody on Sunday, as the country’s military leaders and Islamists vowed to keep up their fight over Egypt’s future.
The deaths were the fourth mass killing of civilians since the military took control on July 3, but the first time so many had died while in government custody.
The news of the deaths came on a day in which there appeared to be a pause in the street battles that have claimed more than 1,000 lives since Wednesday, most of them Islamists and their supporters gunned down by security forces. The Islamists took measures on Sunday to avoid confrontations, including canceling several protests of the military’s ouster of a democratically elected Islamist-led government.
While confirming the killings of the detainees on Sunday, the Ministry of the Interior said the deaths were the consequence of an escape attempt by Islamist prisoners. But officials of the main Islamist movement, the Muslim Brotherhood, described the deaths as “assassinations,” and said that the victims, which it said numbered 52, had been shot and tear-gassed through the windows of a locked prison van.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/19/world/middleeast/morsi-supporters-vow-to-defy-egypts-military.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
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