Egypt's military leadership gives in to have massacre of Copts investigated by a civil court

The Society for Threatened Peoples sees it as a small step forward in the fight against impunity in Egypt, that the Supreme Military Council has changed its attitude towards investigations about a massacre on Coptic people - which will now be investigated by civil judges instead of a military court. "At least there is now a spark of hope that those responsible for the Maspero Massacre will actually be held accountable," said the STP's expert on questions regarding Africa, Ulrich Delius, in Göttingen on Wednesday.

Due to the ongoing demonstrations, the head of the Supreme Military Council - Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi - had given in to claims by the Coptic minority on Tuesday evening after a week-long dispute. Coptic youth organizations had demanded that civil courts should deal with the massacre of October 9, 2011 in Cairo, during which 27 Coptic Christians were killed and 329 injured. Both eyewitness reports and video recordings indicate that the army is responsible for the violent deaths of the protesters. So far, the military council had insisted that the entire case should be dealt with by a military court. "This way, independent investigations on the massacre would not have been possible because military judges would not have charged the soldiers."

The Supreme Military Council so far denies that soldiers used live ammunition against the Coptic protesters during the Maspero Massacre and that the Christians were intentionally rolled over by military vehicles. Several Egyptian human rights organizations have demanded complete and thorough investigations on the bloodbath and have accused the Egyptian army of being responsible for a massacre. The researcher Emad Gad of the "Al Ahram Center for Strategic Studies "in Cairo stated: "These are war crimes that Field Marshal Tantawi is responsible for."