The Nation Newspaper

Tag: Mohamed Morsi’

  • 15 people bag 10 years over protest in Egypt

    15 people bag 10 years over protest in Egypt

    A court in Egypt on Thursday sentenced 15 people to 10 years in prison for  inciting riots and protests and assaulting security forces in 2013 in the southern province of Minya.

    The convicts are supporters of the currently outlawed Muslim Brotherhood group of former President Mohamed Morsi, who was ousted by the army in early July 2013 in response to mass protests against his one-year rule.

    The prosecution also charged them with joining a banned group and calling for protests in response to Morsi’s ouster and the later security crackdown on his loyalists.

    One of the 15 is in custody while the rest were sentenced in absentia.

    Morsi’s angry supporters attacked many security men and churches of the Coptic minority in several provinces nationwide, particularly in Upper Egypt.

    This followed the deadly security dispersal of two major pro-Morsi sit-ins in Cairo and Giza in mid-August 2013 that left hundreds dead and thousands arrested.

    On December 24, 26 defendants were similarly sentenced up to 10 years in prison over committing violence and sabotage and storming a police station in January 2014.

    Most Brotherhood leaders, members and supporters, including Morsi himself and the group’s top chief Mohamed Badie, are currently detained.

    Many of them have been handed death sentences which can be appealed and lengthy jail terms over charges varying from inciting violence and murder to espionage and jailbreak.

    (Xinhua/NAN)

  • Egypt ‘s court sentences 13 terrorists to death

    Egypt ‘s court sentences 13 terrorists to death

    Egypt ’s Giza Criminal Court on Thursday ordered that 13 convicts be  executed  for launching terrorist attacks against security forces, official MENA news agency reported.

    The convicts were from a disbanded militant group that referred itself as Ajnad Misr (Soldiers of Egypt).

    They were charged with installing explosive devices.

    The explosive devices targeted various venues which included checkpoints, police stations, vital institutions and public properties as well as murdering policemen and citizens.

    On October 8, Giza Criminal Court referred the files of the 13 defendants to the country’s highest religious authority, the Grand Mufti, for his non-binding Islamic legal opinion on their execution.

    The case started in July 2014 and it includes 44 defendants in total.

    The execution verdict comes about two weeks after a terrorist attack against a mosque in North Sinai killed at least 310 Muslim worshippers and wounded over 120 others.

    This is the deadliest terror operation and the first against a Muslim mosque in Egypt’s modern history.

    Egypt has been fighting against a wave of terror activities that killed hundreds of policemen and soldiers since the military toppled former Islamist President Mohamed Morsi in July 2013.

    This came as a response to mass protests against his one-year rule and his currently blacklisted Muslim Brotherhood group.

    Terror attacks in Egypt focused on targeting police and military men in North Sinai before spreading nationwide and targeting the Coptic minority as well, with most of them claimed by a Sinai-based group loyal to the regional Islamic State (IS) militant group.

    Ajnad Misr pledged allegiance to the IS in 2014, a year before its founder was killed as announced by the Egyptian police in April 2015.

    Meanwhile, the Egyptian military and police have killed hundreds of militants and arrested a similar number of suspects as part of the country’s anti-terror war declared by President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi, the army chief then, following Morsi’s removal.

    NAN

  • Court sentences two Morsi supporters to death for violence

    An Egyptian court on Tuesday sentenced two supporters of former President Mohamed Morsi to death and 20 others, including six fugitives to 25-year jail terms.

    The Morsi supporters and the fugitives were sentenced for committing acts of violence following the ex-president’s removal in July 2013, the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports.

    The Cairo Criminal Court convicted the defendants, mostly loyalists of Morsi’s now-outlawed Muslim Brotherhood group, of violence, vandalism, murder and attempted murder against anti-Morsi protesters.

    The anti-Morsi demonstration was carried out near Tahrir Square in downtown Cairo after the deadly security dispersal of pro-Morsi sit-ins.

    A minor was also sentenced to 10 years imprisonment on the same case.

    Morsi was overthrown by the military in July 2013 in response to mass protests against his one-year rule.

    Later, security crackdown on his loyalists in mid-August left about 1,000 dead and thousands arrested.

    Morsi is currently serving a recently confirmed 20-year prison sentence for inciting clashes between his supporters and opponents outside a presidential palace in late 2012 that left 10 people dead.

     

  • Egypt to try Morsi for giving Qatar security papers

    Egypt to try Morsi for giving Qatar security papers

    EGYPT’s deposed Islamist president Mohamed Morsi will be tried on charges of giving Qatar documents relating to national security, the state prosecutor said yesterday.

    The former head of state already faces the death penalty in several trials, and his supporters have been the target of a deadly crackdown by the authorities since his ouster in July 2013.

    No date has yet been set for the new trial for Morsi, who is suspected of providing the sensitive documents to the energy-rich Gulf state during his single year of turbulent rule.

    Morsi and 10 co-defendants will go on trial for having “handed over to Qatari intelligence documents linked to national security… in exchange for one million dollars,” a statement said.

    This case represents “the biggest act of treason carried out by the Muslim Brotherhood against the country,” the prosecutor’s statement added.

    Morsi’s Brotherhood was designated a terrorist organisation after his overthrow.

    Co-defendants include Morsi’s former secretary, Amin El-Serafi; the ex-director of his office, Ahmed Abdel Atti, and Ibrahim Mohamed Helal, identified as a chief editor of the Doha-based Al-Jazeera television network.

    In the statement, the prosecutor said Morsi and Abdel Atti gave El-Serafi “extremely sensitive documents concerning the army, its deployment and weaponry” and he in turn gave them to Helal and to a Qatari intelligence operative.

    It said intermediaries, who were not identified, were used to send the documents to Helal and the Qataris.

    The papers included documents from the “general and military intelligence offices of the state security” apparatus, the prosecutor said.

    Morsi, El-Serafi and Abdel Atti are all behind bars. Helal’s whereabouts are unknown.

    In March, the interior ministry accused El-Serafi of handing over to an Al-Jazeera chief editor and Brotherhood member documents regarding the army, its weaponry and troop deployments.

    Relations between Egypt and Qatar soured after Morsi’s ouster, as Cairo criticised Doha’s backing for the Brotherhood.

    Qatar has denounced Egypt’s crackdown on Morsi supporters which has left more than 1,400 people dead.

    Thousands more have been detained and imprisoned, and hundreds have been sentenced to death in speedy mass trials.

    Morsi is already on trial in three separate cases -one for the killing of protesters during his presidency, another for allegedly conspiring with foreign powers including Iran to destabilise Egypt, and a third over a jailbreak during the 2011 uprising that ousted president Hosni Mubarak.

    Morsi could face the death penalty if convicted.

    Egypt has also jailed Al-Jazeera journalists on charges of helping the Brotherhood, triggering an international outcry.

  • Egypt needs a political consensus

    Egypt needs a political consensus

    Much more of this chaos and the army will be back

    President Mohamed Morsi’s declaration of a month-long state of emergency in three Suez Canal cities after a weekend of lethal violence is a depressing way to mark the second anniversary of the Tahrir Square revolution.

    While it is not intrinsic evidence of involution, after 30 years of emergency rule by Hosni Mubarak, the toppled former president, and amid authoritarian reflexes by Mr Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood- led government, it is an alarming index of a downward spiral into chaos that could tempt the army back on to the political stage.

    Quite simply, there is no sign of the stability Egypt needs to revive investment and create jobs. Nor is it clear who rules Egypt. There are still three power centres: a presidency that acts as an extension of the Brotherhood; the generals; and a fragmented secular opposition of small parties and street activists. A controversially dissolved parliament awaits new elections. Vital institutions such as the police and the judiciary need to be reformed.

    The worst violence at the weekend followed death sentences handed down to Port Said football hooligans convicted in the deaths of dozens of rivals in February. That attack was widely seen as a police-facilitated reprisal against the Cairo al-Ahli team’s “ultras”, whose street-fighting skills helped topple the Mubarak regime. Such incidents proliferate amid the chaos and the lack of a consensus to confront it. Mr Morsi and the Brotherhood, through their naked power grabs and secretive decision-making, seem to regard Egypt’s institutions as their own. The opposition fails to articulate an alternative, riding the backlash against Islamist over-reach.

    As this sterile political struggle rages, the economy is on its knees. A long negotiated IMF loan is not yet in place. It would require a socially explosive rationalisation of subsidies that eat up a quarter of the budget. Food and fuel-price inflation is high, and the currency is under strain. Egypt is kept afloat by transfers from Qatar, protecting its investment in the Brotherhood – not quite the “dignity revolution” Egyptians envisaged.

    Some of this turmoil was unavoidable; Egypt is trying to emerge from a desert of despotism. But Mr Morsi does not have much time left to prove mainstream Islamists can govern – and for all Egyptians. The opposition, some of whose leaders applauded the constitutional court’s dissolution last year of an elected parliament, should not crow either. If both camps cannot build a workable consensus, they will both go down together.

     

    – Financial Times