Anonymous says it couldn't sit back and idly watch the horrors that take place

Feb 4, 2013 13:36 GMT  ·  By

At least 8 Egyptian government websites have been taken down by hacktivists after a video showing riot police officers beating a man came to light. The distributed denial-of-service (DDOS) attacks have been launched as part of Operation Egypt (#OpEgypt).

According to EHN, the targeted websites are the ones of the Ministry of Culture (ecm.gov.eg), the Ministry of Information (moinfo.gov.eg), Cabinet of Egypt (cabinet.gov.eg), the country’s Information Portal (eip.gov.eg), the Ministry of Planning and International Cooperation (mic.gov.eg), and the Ministry of Interior (moiegypt.gov.eg).

The sites of the Center for Information and Decision Support Cabinet (idsc.gov.eg) and the one of the State Authority for New and Renewable Energy (nrea.gov.eg) have also been shut down.

Currently, none of the attacked websites appear to be working.

In a statement published on Sunday, the hacktivists argued that they couldn’t just sit back and watch “the horrors” that took place on the streets of Egypt these days.

“Morsi's regime had completely failed in their promise to deliver democracy to the people of Egypt and the same corruption, brutality, lack of democratic freedoms and widespread human rights abuses that existed during the Mubarak era still continues under Muslim Brotherhood rule,” they stated.

“In true dictator style, Morsi unleashed his brutal thugs from the security forces as well as armed plainclothed Muslim Brotherhood members and rifle-toting snipers on the huge numbers of unarmed peaceful protesters who had gathered in Tahrir Square in Cairo, outside the presidential palace in Cairo and in many other locations across Egypt,” they added.

“Anonymous watched in absolute horror as our Egyptian brothers and sisters were literally being shot, stabbed, beaten, tear-gassed, dragged away to detention centers and even [expletive] assaulted by Morsi's thugs - many protesters were killed, some who were killed were not even taking part in any protests.”

According to Anonymous, OpEgypt is far from being over.