Cairo Protest Deaths Underscore the Experience of Young Islamist Activists

Two student protesters were shot dead by police Sunday during a demonstration at Al-Azhar University in Cairo, the oldest seat of learning in the Islamic world and a hotbed of opposition to Egypt's military-backed administration.

Graphic video showing one of the dead men, Attah Ahmed, was circulated on social media, which showed the entire top of his head caved in. His friend Hossam el Masry told VICE News that he and several others brought Attah's body to their dormitory room, where they waited for several hours while police continued their siege. Attah's father eventually arrived, Hossam said, to take his son away.

Ahmed Abdel-Hafez, a student of French, was wounded by a shotgun blast to the back of the head and died in hospital later that night, according to Youssef Salhen, a spokesperson for the pro-Morsi campaign group, Students Against the Coup (SATC), who knew Abdel-Hafez.

The two men were shot, participants in the demonstration said, between noon and 1 PM by the gates to the male dormitory complex, where protesters retreated after their march on the main campus was broken up.

Two days earlier, up to four people, including a 22-year-old female journalist, were gunned down at an opposition rally in the Cairo neighborhood of Ain Shams.

Last July, Egypt's military deposed President Mohamed Morsi amid an upsurge of popular anger against his rule, prompting his supporters to organize massive sit-ins. But when these were violently dispersed in August, his followers took to holding small pinprick demonstrations in neighborhoods and universities around the country, often clashing with armed police.

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Until the end of January, it was common for several people to be killed each Friday, when midday prayers are routinely followed by demonstrations. Since then, however, deadly clashes have become less frequent, as demonstrators took measures to avoid the police.

These recent deaths break that trend, and underscore the experience of the young, mainly Islamist, activists who continue to take to the streets in defense of what they describe as the principles of democracy and legitimacy.

"It comes to be so personal and disappointing that we are losing our peers and colleagues every day, those that are killed and those that are arrested," Salhen told VICE News. He said that he believed that those attending the demonstrations did so knowing the risks that they were taking.

"He or she already knows that they might be killed," Salhen said. "Speaking personally, I have had dozens of friends killed or put into prison. And I would feel really bad if I did not participate in anything to support what they died for, and what they lost their liberty for. So we are on track until the end."

The Youm7 newspaper website claimed that senior general Mamdouh Shahin was visiting the campus Sunday, which Mahmoud al Azhary, another student activist, speculated may have been the reason for the unusually violent approach of the security forces.

Tensions had already been heightened by the mass death sentence of more than 500 alleged Muslim Brotherhood supporters last Monday, over an attack on a police station last August in which one police officer was killed.

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Sarah Youssef, a SATC activist, participated in a separate women's demonstration at the university on Sunday. Youssef told VICE News that she was forced back with the other women into a dormitory by a barrage of tear gas, and then trapped there while they heard the clatter of gunfire and saw thick smoke rising from the men's dormitory several hundred meters away.

Al Azhary said that he saw Ahmed standing amongst a group of 15 or so students when he was shot in the head, collapsing immediately. Al Azhary said that he ran to the fallen man and helped several others pick up bits of his shattered skull, before carrying him back to the makeshift dormitory field hospital.

All of the activists contacted by VICE News denied that any of the demonstrators carried firearms, and expressed surprise at the response of the police. It was not immediately possible to reach the Interior Ministry for comment. The Muslim Brotherhood was formally designated a terrorist organization in December, although little if any public evidence has been provided to support this designation.

Eric Trager, an analyst at the Washington Institute, argues that young Brotherhood supporters, organizing through social media, are increasingly turning to low-level violence to protest the crackdown, which has left more than 1,000 people dead.

Sunday's violence provoked further demonstrations Monday, leading to further clashes at the Al-Azhar campus in which a garage was burned down, and at other universities around the country. Al-Azhar announced the expulsion of 25 students over involvement in the protests.

"Those who burned the university's parking lot, are a paid and deviant group," the university said in a statement.