2013: EGYPT’S SUMMER OF DISCONTENT
JUNE 24: Ibrahim Halawa arrives in Egypt to spend the summer with family after completing his Leaving Cert.
JUNE 29: Anti-Morsi Tamarod (Rebel) Campaign says it has 22 million signatures asking for Morsi’s resignation (far exceeding the 13 million that voted Morsi into office one year earlier). He refuses to resign.
JUNE 30: An estimated 14 million people take to streets across Egypt calling for Morsi’s resignation.
JULY 1: As protests continue, Egypt’s military give Morsi 48 hours for a political solution or it will impose its own.
JULY 3: Military ousts Morsi, replacing him with an interim administration. New elections are to be called in a year.
JULY 4: General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi steps in as Egypt’s interim president. Morsi supporters begin sit-ins vowing not to move from their protest camps until he is restored.
JULY 8: Violent clashes at the Republican Guard club leave 54 dead.
JULY 26: Hundreds of thousands rally across Egypt in support of military. Sisi appears on TV asking for a mandate to fight ‘terrorism’.
JULY 27: More than 70 people killed in clashes with security forces at Rabaa protest camp.
AUGUST 14: Security forces clear the Rabaa sit-in protest, killing 817 people in what Human Rights Watch call “one of the world’s largest killings in a single day in recent history”.
AUGUST 16: Muslim Brotherhood call for a ‘Day of Rage’ with protests across Egypt. 52 civilians and eight police officers are killed. That night Ibrahim Halawa and his sisters are arrested.