Details of the incident, which took place somewhere in Egypt’s Western Desert on 13 September, remain sketchy. What is known is that Mexican and Egyptian tourists were travelling in four vehicles on a tour excursion organised by a company called Windows of Egypt when they were fired upon from the air. Egypt’s interior ministry released a statement saying that the vehicles had entered an area of desert which was “off limits to foreign tourists” without permits when they were “mistakenly dealt with” in a joint military police and armed forces operation against Islamic militants.
President Enrique Peña Nieto promptly condemned the attack and demanded “an exhaustive investigation” by the Egyptian government. Mexico’s foreign minister Claudia Ruiz Massieu said in a press conference on 14 September that six Mexican survivors of the attack had informed the country’s ambassador in Egypt, Jorge Álvarez Fuentes, that the tourist party had paused for a meal when they “suffered an aerial attack with bombs launched by a plane and helicopters”. She said they were near the Bahariya oasis at the time. Egypt’s tourism ministry said that they were some 75 km south of here near the Farafra oasis. It blamed the tour company for committing “not one but several violations which resulted in a catastrophe that smeared the industry and the whole country.”
The Egyptian military attack poses a serious test for Ruiz Massieu just two weeks after she replaced José Antonio Meade as foreign minister. Ruiz Massieu did not repeat the mistakes of Mexico’s interior ministry in high-profile cases, such as the abduction and presumed murder of 43 trainee teachers in Iguala, Guerrero, in September 2014, which prompted a slow response and an investigation which has been criticised as deeply flawed [WR-15-36]. Her response was decisive and proactive, immediately involving the families of the victims and inviting seven relatives to accompany her to Cairo, aboard the presidential plane loaned by Peña Nieto, to discover more details about the attack and investigation and to visit the survivors in a hospital near Cairo. The plane arrived in Egypt on 15 September.
Peña Nieto received a phone call from his Egyptian peer Abdul Fattah al-Sisi, on the telephone on 15 September, expressing his deepest condolences for the “tragic incident” and promising to offer the Mexican diplomatic mission full assistance. Egypt’s ambassador in Mexico, Yasser Shaban, said the Egyptian government had established an investigative committee headed by the prime minister, Ibrahim Mahlab, and that the results of this would be published. The reaction from the Egyptian cabinet suggests the blame will be laid entirely on the tour company rather than the military.
Tempers fray in congress over Iguala report
Just days before events in Egypt, Mexico’s congress held a heated debate into the report by the Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts for the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) into the Iguala tragedy which pointed to serious flaws in the investigations conducted by the attorney general’s office (PGR).
Photos of the ‘disappeared’ and banners were held aloft by opposition deputies who demanded a fresh investigation to clarify what happened to the 43 trainee students. Deputies representing the left-wing Partido de la Revolución Democrática (PRD) unfurled a banner emblazoned with the phrase ‘It was the State’, prompting deputies from the ruling Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) to produce a banner adding the words ‘of Guerrero’ (the state was run by the PRD at the time of the student disappearances).
Peña Nieto will meet the parents of the missing students later this month. A lawyer for the parents said they were seeking “a clear commitment” from the government to “completely restructure the investigations” into the case, adding that there was growing concern that although Peña Nieto might have personally accepted the recommendations others within his administration, possibly due to professional pride, “are still questioning the report”.
End of preview - This article contains approximately 837 words.
Subscribers: Log in now to read the full article
Not a Subscriber?
Choose from one of the following options
