Islamists Killed While in Custody, Egypt Confirms

Bryan Denton for The New York Times

Supporters of the deposed Egyptian president, Mohamed Morsi, marched in Cairo on Sunday, but several marches were scaled back or rerouted.

By ROD NORDLAND
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 when there appeared to be a pause in the street battles that had 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 further confrontations, including canceling several protests over 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.

The killings were the latest indication that Egypt is careering into uncharted territory, with neither side willing to back down, Egyptians increasingly split over the way forward and no obvious political solution in sight. The government is considering banning the Brotherhood, which might force the group underground but would not unravel it from the fabric of society it has been part of for eight decades.

Foreign governments also remain divided over the increasingly bloody showdown. United States officials said they had taken preliminary steps to withhold financial aid to the Egyptian government, though not crucial military aid, and the European Union announced Sunday that it would “urgently review” its relations with the country, saying the interim government bore the responsibility for bringing the violence to an end.

But the Egyptian military retains the support of the oil-rich states of the Persian Gulf, especially Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, which have pledged billions in aid to the new government.

Although it appeared that security forces were more restrained on Sunday — with no immediate reports of killings in the streets — Maj. Gen. Abdul-Fattah el-Sisi, the country’s military leader, spoke out on national television in defiant and uncompromising tones, condemning the Islamists again as “terrorists,” but promising to restore democracy to the country.

The government has been pursuing a relentless campaign to paint the Islamists as a threat, and has increasingly lashed out at journalists who do not echo that line, especially the foreign news media.

Acknowledging but rejecting the widespread international criticism of the security force’s actions, the general said that “citizens invited the armed forces to deal with terrorism, which was a message to the world and the foreign media, who denied millions of Egyptians their free will and their true desire to change.”

The Muslim Brotherhood had announced that it would stage nine protest marches in and around Cairo on Sunday as part of its “week of departure” campaign that began Friday to protest the military’s deposing of the country’s first democratically elected president, Mohamed Morsi.

All but three of the marches were canceled, and even those that continued were rerouted to avoid snipers who were waiting ahead, along with bands of government supporters, the police and the military, some in tanks. The authorities, too, appeared to avoid aggressively enforcing martial law provisions, including a 7 p.m. curfew, that would have led to clashes with the protesters.

Protesters who gathered at the Al Rayyan mosque in the Maadi area of Cairo had aimed to march from there to the Constitutional Court, Egypt’s supreme court, whose chief justice, Adli Mansour, has been appointed interim president by the country’s military rulers.

Marching in the 100-degree late afternoon heat, the protesters were fatalistic about the threats they faced. Mohammad Abdel Tawab, who said his brother was killed Friday at Ramses Square, had heard the reports of pro-government snipers and gangs ahead. “They will kill us, I know, everybody knows, but it doesn’t matter,” he said.

A woman, Samira, dressed in an abaya with only her eyes visible, marched holding her 1-year-old daughter, Sama. “Whatever will happen to us, will happen,” she said. “God has written it already.”

Protest leaders, however, were more cautious, and repeatedly rerouted the march at the last moment to avoid confrontations, turning down narrow lanes where residents in upper stories sprayed them with water — it was not always clear whether the gesture was in support or in contempt.

In the last mile, the leader of the march, Mohammad Salwan, ordered everyone to get on the metro train for the final approach to the court, and then the protesters dissipated instead of trying to breach barricades set up by pro-military factions.

“We know there are snipers along the route, and we want to avoid losing any more lives,” he said.

Similarly, a protest in Giza was called off after it was threatened by military supporters, and the only other one to be held was in a strongly pro-Brotherhood area, Helwan, in south Cairo. Another march, to the presidential palace in Heliopolis, was also canceled.

“The leadership decided things were getting out of control and they couldn’t afford more casualties,” said a Brotherhood member who writes for one of the group’s publications and who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak for the organization.

Even on Saturday, which had seemed relatively quiet, 79 people were killed in violence around Egypt, according to the government press agency, MENA, in an announcement on Sunday. It provided few details.

Brotherhood leaders in particular have paid a heavy price, with the children of many top officials among the dead. They include Asmaa el-Beltagy, the daughter of a senior Brotherhood leader, Mohamed el-Beltagy, killed at Rabaa Square on Wednesday; Ammar Badie, 38, son of Brotherhood spiritual leader Mohamed Badie, shot during clashes on Friday in Ramses Square; Habiba Abd el-Aziz, 26, the daughter of Ahmed Abd el-Aziz, the media consultant to ousted President Morsi, killed at Rabaa from a bullet wound to the head on Wednesday; and the grandson of the movement’s founder.

There were scant details on the prison killings on Sunday, and no explanation for why the victims were inside a prison van and had reportedly taken a prison official hostage.

The Ministry of the Interior issued conflicting and confusing accounts of what had happened, at one point claiming the prisoners had taken a guard hostage, then saying militants had attacked the prison van to free the prisoners, who were killed in the process, and then saying tear gas being used to suppress the escape had caused the prisoners to suffocate. Later, the ministry claimed the deaths had happened in the prison, not in the van.

The violence came a day after a blistering speech in support of the Muslim Brotherhood by Turkey’s prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who likened Egypt’s military leader, General Sisi, to President Bashar al-Assad of Syria.

“There are currently two paths in Egypt: those who follow the pharaoh, and those who follow Moses,” he said. Speaking before the European Union’s announcement of a review of relations, he also criticized other countries’ position regarding the military government.

 “The Organization of the Islamic Conference and the European Union have no face left to look at in the mirror,” he said.

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Mayy El Sheikh, Kareem Fahim and David D. Kirkpatrick contributed reporting.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: August 18, 2013

An earlier version of this article misidentified Asmaa el-Beltagy, who was killed at Rabaa Square. She was the daughter, not the son, of a senior Muslim Brotherhood leader, Mohamed el-Beltagy.