Abdel Rahman AL-Tarabelle, the Egyptian champion in Roman wrestling who represented Egypt in London Olympics in 2012, didn’t participate in Rio Olympic Games this year.
The champion was killed at Port Said governorate following Rabaa sit-in dispersal by the Egyptian security forces.
The Egyptian champion was killed by the Egyptian security forces which were shooting live ammunition randomly during the funeral of Rabaa sit-in victims.
In August 2013, the Egyptian security forces killed 5 people in the funeral, Abdel Rahman was one of those victims.
The champion was shot with four bullets, the first one rested in his stomach and during bandaging his wounds, a sniper shot him with three bullets in his head and shoulder.
The Roman wrestling champion won the bronze medal in both the World and the Mediterranean championship.
In addition, he won the silver medal in the Arab Championship.
Abdel Rahman was preparing for the Olympic Games but the security forces targeted him before fulfilling his dreams as other youths who were either killed or detained in the Egyptian prisons for opposing the military coup.
On 3 July 2013, Abdel Al-Fattah Al-Sisi-the former Defense Minister- led a military coup against the first democratically elected President Mohamed Morsi. Since the coup, the Egyptian authorities launched a massive crackdown against the political opposition to the military rule.
As thousands of pro-Morsi supporters took to the streets protesting the military coup, they were faced with gun fires and live ammunition that killed peaceful unarmed protesters. Many of Egypt’s public squares and streets were awash in blood. The most bloody massacre was the dispersal of Rabaa and al-Nahda sit-ins.
The Human Right Watch, after one year of investigation into the massacre, found that the Egyptian police and army forces systematically and intentionally used excessive lethal force in their policing, resulting in killings of protesters on an unprecedented scale in Egypt.
“The killings not only constituted serious violations of international human rights law but likely amounted to crimes against humanity, given both their widespread and systematic nature and the evidence suggesting the killings were part of a policy to attack unarmed persons on political grounds,” concluded HRW.
