Four police officers will stand trial for the killing of 39 Muslim Brotherhood members during the protest that followed the removal of first-elected President Mohamed Morsi, Egypt's prosecutor general, Judge Hesham Barakat said on Tuesday, according to Reuters.
The members of the Brotherhood were taken by security forces led by Abdel Fattah el-Sisi on Aug. 18, four days after the same security forces invaded pro-Morsi protest camps in one of Egypt's bloodiest days in recent history, Reuters reported.
After 45 detainees were put into the back of a police van, policeman threw tear gas inside the van, Reuters reported. The tear gas led to the death of 37 of the detainees and suffocated two others.
"Investigations have proven that the officers transported 45 prisoners inside a transport vehicle that is not suitable to carry more than 24 people and fired teargas inside," the prosecutor general's office said in a statement to Reuters.
"The four policemen have been arrested and charged with murder and unintended injury," a security source told Reuters. Four senior officers had been jailed for four days while they await trial, but three junior officers were released.
According to the Interior Ministry, the prisoners were trying to escape as the vehicle transported them to a jail and had taken a police officer hostage inside the van, Reuters reported.
The Egypt Director for the Human Rights Watch, Heba Morayef, claims the detention of the four policeman is "an important first step," but that more accountability is needed, according to Reuters.
"I'm not sure I see this as a turning point. I see this as an exception to the broader impunity enjoyed by security services for the excessive use of force," Morayef said, according to Reuters. "I don't see this as a broader shift because this is such a clear cut case where the state was responsible because these were prisoners and it was impossible to ignore it."
After foreign powers have called on Egypt to include all political parties and the United States cut military aid until progress is made towards more democratic policies, the interim government allegedly plans to hold new elections next year, Reuters reported.