Egypt criticises Amnesty report on air strikes against Daesh

The Foreign Ministry has slammed a recent report by Amnesty International on the Egyptian air strikes against Daesh targets in Libya.
The AI report said that Egypt failed to "take necessary precautions" to protect civilians when it launched air strikes in Libya following the beheading of 21 Egyptian Christians by Daesh earlier this month.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Badr Abdel Aati said he was astonished and angered by the report, which included false and incorrect information.
Egypt has always been committed to international conventions and standards, Abdel Aati said, insisting targets were accurately and precisely located.
The strikes targeted training and weapon storage centers that belong to Daesh, the spokesman stressed.
Egypt used its legitimate and genuine right to defend itself in line with the UN Charter, he said.
Abel Aati also pointed to full coordination with the legitimate Libyan government, which asked Egypt's help in the face of terrorist organizations, one of which is Daesh.
Egypt is very keen on protecting civilian lives, Adel Aati said, stressing that the air strikes were conducted after a thorough study to avoid any civilian deaths.
He wondered where such international organizations were when super powers conducted thousands of air strikes that killed hundreds, if not thousands, of civilians in a number of Arab and Muslim states.
Such organizations, including the AI, have made a point of ignoring all those facts and dared not tackle them under the pretext that they had not been intended, the spokesman noted.
This raises a big question mark about how serious those organizations are and their true intentions, he said.
Those organizations are adopting a double-standard and selective policy, particularly where super powers are concerned, Abdel Aati charged.
He also criticized comments made by a number of countries and international organizations on court rulings in Egypt. They choose to overlook the different phases of litigation and the right to appeals, Abdel Aati noted.
Democracies are based on the separation of powers and judicial independence, he reminded.
Source: MENA