Port-Said: Both fans and security guilty

The football clashes that left 75 dead Cairo – Akram Ali Egypt’s parliamentary fact finding committee investigation into the deaths of 74 people in the disaster of Port Said's stadium has found that both fans and security forces are to blame for the worst incident of its kind in the country's history, the committee’s head announced on Sunday, during a Parliament session.
The incident occurred at the end of a match between Port Said-based Al-Masry and Cairo's Al Ahly, the most successful club in Africa.
Witnesses to the February 2 incident said hundreds of Al-Masry supporters surged across the pitch to the visitors' end spreading panic within Al-Ahly fans (the Ultras) and making them dash for the exit. However, the steel doors were bolted shut and dozens were crushed to death in the stampede. Many believe the incident was sparked by hired thugs.
“The security paved the way for such a violent event to occur,” said MP Ashraf Thabet, head of the fact-finding committee, who explained that fans were allowed into the stadium without being searched or even asked to show their tickets.
While 12,000 tickets were sold, he said, 18,000 were in the stadium that day.
Furthermore, security did not stop fans from entering the football field. No one “moved a foot,” according to eyewitnesses' accounts. Unidentified civilians were allowed by security onto the field without scrutiny, Thabet said.
The committee also found that the two plans to secure the stadium were identical, apart from an increase of 25 officers to reinforce each security cordon.
The report also took the Egyptian Football Federation to task, claiming that it violated standard FIFA regulations on securing matches.
“The [Federation] must have a security official who monitors security before, during and after the match,” Thabet said, noting that one of the responsibilities of the security official is to evaluate the political situation in the country including potential terrorist threats or clashes between fans.
The Port Said Stadium Authority was held responsible for sealing the stadium’s doors.
Previous matches in Port Said preannounced that a catastrophe was likely to happen, said the report, highlighting that Port Said’s Al-Masry fans had attacked Alexandria’s Itihad fans already in 2011 and threatened hostility towards Al-Ahly on internet forums.
The report laid blame on "Ultras", the hardcore soccer fans who regularly confront riot police at matches and have been on the front line of confrontations with the security forces since the uprising that toppled former president Hosni Mubarak.
Thabet also blamed incitement by sports media which encourages fanaticism and helped create a crisis between the fans of both clubs.
Clashes between fans on social networks were clear indication of impending violence, with Al-Masry’s fans telling Al-Ahly’s that they will die and the others responding that “Port Said has no men.”
The committee said investigations were still going on and that it would announce final results in its final report which would assign political responsibility for the events.
Egypt’s People’s Assembly Speaker Saad El-Katatny adjourned the evening session following Thabet’s presentation and announced that the report will be discussed in parliament on Monday.
Meanwhile on Sunday, a Coptic Christian march of a few hundred Egyptians arrived at the Egyptian People’s Assembly and a delegation met with members of parliament to discuss the forced eviction of several Coptic families in Alexandria.
 Egyptian parliament’s Fact-Finding Committee announced that security forces have been blamed for Port Said violence.
 The full findings of the report were to be released later on Sunday when parliament returned to session.
 According to preliminary results published in local Egyptian Arabic press, the interior ministry received the lion’s share of blame, with videos and witnesses detailing the failure of the police to intervene to stop the violence from escalating.
 The clashes began when fans of the Al-Masry football team attacked the Al-Ahly team’s fans (Ultras) following their 3-1 win.
 The report will likely accuse the Port Said security of negligence as it failed to respond to the violence, which could be seen boiling towards the end of the match.
 The violence led to massive protests against the police and Egypt’s ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) the following day in Cairo and Suez. The clashes led to at least 15 more deaths and thousands injured as angry fans and activists called for the end of military rule in Egypt.
 In other news,  a Coptic Christian march of a few hundred Egyptians arrived at the Egyptian parliament and a delegation met with members of Parliament to discuss the forced eviction of several Coptic families in Alexandria, Mina Thabet, an executive member and spokesman of the Maspero Youth Union said in a press release on Sunday.
“We marched to the parliament chanting against the forced migration of Coptic families and now a delegation from the march is meeting with Alexandrian MPs and others to present the case and see what they have to say,” Thabet said.
 The case dates back a few months when a Coptic tailor residing in the Al-Ameriya district, outside of Alexandria on the northern coast, had an alleged affair with a married Muslim woman.
 The news quickly spread in the small community of a few thousand and ended up with the man’s family, along with a number of other Coptic Christian families being forced to leave the town and sell their property in order to “establish peace” once again.
 Several Coptic homes were raided in the town amidst the Muslim residents anger at the alleged affair, only to add oil to the flames when rumours surfaced that there is a sex tape of the man and the woman.
 No one could verify or confirm the alleged sex tape, but it seems widely believed to be true in the town.
 The town’s elders gathered to decide how to contain the problem before it spiraled even more out of control. They met at the state security building in an “unofficial” session on February 1 to decide the fate of the man and his family, and came to the decision that the man and his family had to leave the town and sell their belongings and property and never return.
 Six more Coptic families were ordered out of the town as well for their participation in the events, four of them from the same extended family.
 Egyptian political forces condemned the incident and called the ruling unwarranted collective punishment without any legal basis, and a move that will feed sectarian tension and damage the sense of national unity. They also accused the government of not applying the law properly and frequently resorting to informal hearings to solve any sectarian crisis.
“This is a shameful stain on the face of this nation and a stain in the history of humanity that a man is forced to migrate because of his religion,” Thabet wrote earlier in a statement to the press.
 However, Ikhwan Web, the official English website of the Muslim Brotherhood, denied that the incident even took place. The site published statements by Hossam Al-Wakil, media spokesman for the Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) in Alexandria that there are no problems between Muslims and Christians in Nahda village.
 "The crisis that broke out between Muslims and Christians in the village, after the recent circulation of video footage showing scenes of an illicit relationship between a young Christian tailor and a Muslim woman, ended with a decision by the village’s residents to remove the people of both Christian and Muslim families involved only, in order to prevent further bloodshed and sectarian trouble," El-Wakil told IkhwanWeb.
 He also said that the decision was made by the governor of Alexandria, MPs from the FJP and the Salafist El-Nour Party as well as village elders. He justified the holding of an informal hearing to resolve the crisis by saying that the Bedouin nature of the village made this type of hearing appropriate.
 Al-Wakil criticised the media's coverage of the event as "dangerous, misleading and just not true at all."