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Survivors of Rabia massacre still search for justice

A year has passed since more than 1,000 pro-Morsi protesters were killed in Cairo, and anger festers among families of victims who demand justice.
A student supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood and ousted President Mohamed Mursi reflects sunlight with a mirror to distract riot police officers during clashes in front of Al-Azhar University's campus, in Cairo's Nasr City district, May 9, 2014. The protesters marched towards Rabaa square, closing the roads, during a demonstration by members of the Muslim Brotherhood and the pro-Mursi Anti-Coup National Alliance against the military, interior ministry and presidential candidate Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, the fo

CAIRO — Nour was 17 when he heard about the death of his teacher and nine friends in the span of few hours. He was at Rabia al-Adawiya Square on Aug. 14, 2013. “Seeing brains pouring out of people’s heads had become the norm for us that day,” he said. His account of the day is as disjointed as it is gory. It was like “a sea of blood. We stepped on the body parts of dead people.”

More than 1,000 were killed that day during simultaneous crackdowns on two sit-ins supporting ousted president Mohammed Morsi. At least 817 were killed in the eastern Cairo encampment of Rabia Square, according to a Human Rights Watch (HRW) report that described it as “one of the world’s largest killings of demonstrators in a single day in recent history.”

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