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London — Egyptian opposition groups and human rights campaigners have called for the investigation and arrest of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and members of his entourage during his visit to London amid condemnation of the “red carpet” welcome extended by the British government to a leader accused of plunging his country into the worst human rights crisis in its history.

Hundreds of protesters, including many Egyptian exiles, gathered on Wednesday evening outside 10 Downing Street, the prime minister’s official residence, where Sisi was due to meet David Cameron on Thursday morning, to express their opposition to the visit, carrying banners reading “Stop butcher el-Sisi” and “Killer Sisi not welcome in the United Kingdom”.

Many wore yellow T-shirts or carried flags bearing the four-fingered R4BIA symbol commemorating the hundreds of people shot dead by security forces in August 2013, while protesting in Cairo’s Rabaa Square in an episode described by Human Rights Watch (HRW) as “one of the world’s largest killings of demonstrators in a single day in recent history”.

“Morsi is democracy, Sisi is hypocrisy,” they chanted, referring to Mohamed Morsi, the democratically elected president removed from office by Sisi in a military coup in July 2013.

“We stand here today to say shame on you Cameron. Not in the name of the British people, not in the name of the Egyptian people, will we accept the bloodstained hands of a dictator who has come to Britain to gain legitimacy,” Maha Azzam, the head of the Egyptian Revolutionary Council, a coalition of opposition groups, told the crowd.

“If General Sisi today thinks he has diplomatic immunity, let me remind him that he will not be able to run away from justice. Justice awaits him. Egyptians today deserve to have their rights and freedoms respected.”

Sisi has been condemned by international human rights watchdogs since launching a crackdown against the Muslim Brotherhood, which his government considers a terrorist organisation, and other opposition groups, with thousands of protesters killed and imprisoned and hundreds sentenced to death under his rule.

“Egypt is going through its worst human rights crisis for decades,” David Mepham, the UK director of Human Rights Watch, said.

“Far from moving towards democracy, what we have seen is a ferocious crackdown on dissent and opposition, the denial of fundamental rights and freedoms, and the rebuilding of the very authoritarian state that people in Tahrir Square and elsewhere were protesting against in 2011.”

Cameron was the first Western leader to visit Tahrir Square in the aftermath of the 2011 revolution that ended the rule of Egypt’s long-term military leader Hosni Mubarak and said at the time that he had gone there to “support the aspirations of people in Egypt for a more genuine, open democracy”.

The UK has retained close ties to the Egyptian government since the restoration of military rule, with Michael Fallon, the British defence minister, declaring in August while in Egypt to attend the opening of the expanded Suez Canal that the countries stood “shoulder to shoulder” in a fight against “evil extremism”.

British-based companies such as BP and Vodafone also remain among the biggest players in the Egyptian economy, with $24bn invested in the country by British businesses in the past five years, while the UK arms industry is a major supplier of weapons and other military equipment. —   Al Jazeera