A year after a bloody Cairo crackdown, President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has tightened his grip on Egypt, crushed the Muslim Brotherhood, jailed top opponents and turned the page on the Arab Spring, critics say.

On August 14, 2013, after Sisi ousted Egypt’s first freely elected president, Mohamed Morsi, the security forces launched a crackdown on thousands of his supporters at protest camps in Cairo’s Rabaa al-Adawiya and Nahda squares that left hundreds dead.

The assault was “one of the largest killings of demonstrators in a single day in recent history,” said New York-based Human Rights Watch in a report released on Tuesday (Aug 12) to mark the anniversary.

… “Sisi has succeeded in eliminating most opposition within Egypt to his rule,” said James Dorsey of the Singapore-based S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies. “He has banned organisations, jailed opponents and certainly in early days after the ouster of Mohamed Morsi used brutal force to suppress groups like the Muslim Brotherhood. He is operating in an environment where for all practical purposes there is no independent media to hold him to account. As a result he has consolidated his rule.”