Protester killed in Egypt a year after husband's same fate

She left her home to protest against her husband's death which took place last year during the violent dispersal of an eastern Cairo sit-in staged in support of ousted president Mohamed Morsi.

Zeinab Mahmoud Saber met the same fate as her husband on Friday. The 45-year-old woman was killed by birdshot to the chest and the stomach as she participated in a march held on Friday by Morsi's backers.

Only 373 days had separated Saber's death from that of her husband. Both of them are only survived by their 9-year-old daughter, Rawan, who is now an orphan.

"They were pious people," Saad Mitwali, a relative of Saber and her husband told Anadolu Agency about them. "They participated in the Rabaa al-Adawiya sit-in, before the husband was killed in the gathering's dispersal," he added.

He said the woman had been a constant participant of activities in support of the ousted president and against the current authorities in Egypt, hoping to avenge her husband's death.

"She was, however, killed by the same police gunfire that killed her husband before," Mitwali said.

The Egyptian Interior Ministryhas always denies charges that its personnel use live ammunition to disperse demonstrators across the nation.

But this comes short of explaining the huge death toll that happened during the violent dispersal of the Rabaa al-Adawiya sit-in. Hundreds of backers of the ousted president were killed, while thousands of others injured when the authorities used force to disperse the sit-in on August 14.

A Human Rights Watch report released on 12 August into the incident titled 'The Rab’a massacre and mass killings of protesters in Egypt' concluded that current Egyptian President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi is ultimately responsible for the massacre of protesters in Egypt in July and August 2013. 

The product of a year-long investigation, and published near the anniversary of the so-called Rabaa massacre on 14 August, the report calls for the matter to be investigated by the United Nations, as well as the Egyptian authorities, and urges that those responsible face justice.

Total pain

Rawan is in a state of utter pain. The girl never stops crying. When her mother was killed, she continued to sit by her body until her clothes became totally stained with blood, relatives said.

"The father was shot in the head, the mother was shot in the chest and the stomach, and this girl can by killed by her sadness over her parents," Khalil Abdel-Wahed, a relative of the parents, said.

He said Saber had always told her daughter that her father was killed because he was a real man and that he died only to liberate his country and defend legitimacy.

"We will now tell the girl that her mother died for the same cause," Abdel-Wahed said. "We will tell her that her mother died to defend her country," he added.

He said Rawan would be adopted by her grandmother.

The backers of the ousted president have been championing the opposition to the current authorities for about a year now.

Since Morsi's ouster by the army on July 3, his supporters have not stopped staging protests, marches and rallies to call for the return of what they describe as "constitutional legitimacy" or the return of the elected president.