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Flight From Darfur Ends Violently in Egypt
Hagga Abbas Haroun's daughter, Samar, shown with a family friend, survived the fire from Egyptian border guards that killed her mother.
(Photos By Nora Younis For The Washington Post)
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But Haroun spoke only of her crushing guilt for her family still in Darfur, Saleh recalled. "She said, 'I came to Egypt and I've done nothing' " for them.
Haroun's husband, who was captured after the shooting, later told a military court that he had hoped to find work in Israel.
Haroun told Saleh that she dreamed of her family winding up in Europe or the United States.
The tiny black bag Haroun packed for the journey reflected her dreams -- clothes for her young daughter, her own carefully preserved diplomas, and, despite its weight, a hardcover Arabic-English dictionary.
Where Haroun was going, she hoped to speak English.
Lethal Force for Refugees
The smugglers came to take Haroun, her husband and daughter from the Egyptian border town of Rafah at 10 p.m. on July 21, according to accounts the refugees later gave to relatives and friends in Cairo and to their attorneys and the Egyptian military courts, as well as accounts from the Bedouin guides and Egyptian border officials.
The refugees traveled as a group of 14 adults and eight children, two of them still nursing.
At Border Marker No. 6, across the border from the Israeli city of Beer Sheva many miles away, the Bedouins took the African families to a crevice between two curving ridges. The border -- a few dozen yards of rocks and a stretch of wire fence -- lay atop one of the ridges. From below, the refugees could see an edge of the border, a rusted Egyptian watchtower on the ridge, with border guards on duty. The Bedouin guides split the large group into two for the crossing. They guides waited for a shift change by the border guards and then left with the first group to cross. It was past midnight under a waning moon.
Haroun and her husband stayed behind, in a group with all the children, Abkar and others recounted later. They lay in the dark, tensed. Some tried to rest for the journey ahead. Haroun lay with Samar, cradling her.
Then one of the other children suddenly cried out, sobbing.
The Egyptian border guards raised their weapons. They aimed toward the sound of the wailing child, according to accounts from the refugees and the Bedouins. And the guards opened fire.
