Patrick Kingsley in Cairo Sunday 17 May 2015
Muslim Brotherhood say prison break sentences are act of revenge by Egyptian regime as crackdown intensifies
Mohamed Morsi sentenced to death
Egyptian court sentences former president Mohamed Morsi to death for his part in a mass jailbreak in 2011.
Egyptian Islamists have warned that the world should brace itself for a backlash after the country’s first freely elected president, the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohamed Morsi, was given a provisional death sentence nearly two years after he was overthrown by the army following mass protests against his rule.
Morsi was among over 100 men sentenced to death on Saturday for allegedly escaping prison during the 2011 uprising that toppled Morsi’s predecessor, Hosni Mubarak. Morsi and his colleagues were convicted of conspiring with Hamas, the Brotherhood’s Palestinian offshoot, whom judges decided had helped the prisoners leave jail in January 2011.
The sentence is provisional until the government’s most senior Islamic cleric gives his opinion. A final decision is due on 2 June. Even if the execution is upheld, analysts doubt that the Egyptian regime will follow through with such a provocative act. In a separate espionage case on Saturday, Morsi was sentenced to life in prison and, in a third case last month, to 20 years for incitement to violence.
The death sentence is nevertheless the latest salvo in a 23-month crackdown on Islamist and leftist groups that has seen thousands killed and tens of thousands imprisoned. Morsi’s supporters presented it as vengeance on the part of the regime, parts of which have reconstituted themselves under Morsi’s usurper and former defence chief, Abdel Fatah al-Sisi.
Hoda Abdel Moneim, a senior official within the Brotherhood’s political wing, said those sentenced included two who died in 2008 and 2009, and a third who has been in jail in Israel for years. “They just want revenge,” she argued. “We are in a farce led by the military, facilitated by the corrupt media, and implemented by a corrupt judiciary.”
One of those sentenced to death in absentia, the Brotherhood official Ahmed Ramy Elhofy, warned the west to expect a backlash. “All the world will pay for this death sentence, will pay for their silence about the sentence, and for betraying the principles of freedom and justice,” said Elhofy, who is now in exile.
He added: “Put yourself in the place of the hundreds of families who are sure their sons are innocent, and who are now seeing them sentenced to death, and seeing the world letting them down. How will they look at the world, and at those talking about justice and human rights? Of course you will have a proportion of people who will veer off course. We don’t have control over their actions.”
Mohamed Morsi sentenced to death by Egyptian court Judgment handed out against Islamist former president over charges of espionage and jailbreak nearly two years after overthrow
At the time of his alleged jailbreak in 2011, Morsi had been in prison for just a few days. He and other Muslim Brotherhood leaders were arbitrarily arrested after the start of the Egyptian uprising, as the Mubarak regime desperately tried to silence those organising demonstrations. Morsi’s supporters argue his subsequent escape was possible only because guards abandoned their posts following a change in tactics from central command. They point to a phone call between Morsi and an al-Jazeera reporter on the day of the alleged jailbreak, in which Morsi says: “We are telling the world: we will not flee. If there is an official in Egypt who wants to get in contact with us, we’re here, I’m here, the telephone is here. We will never run away. We are well and we will not hide.”
Following the 2011 uprising, Morsi and his colleagues were not censured for leaving prison that day, and Morsi was even allowed to run for president in an election in which he narrowly defeated Mubarak’s last prime minister. A year later, in July 2013, the army capitalised on mounting public anger at his increasingly hard-line actions and jailed him and his allies.
The wave of nationalism that subsequently brought Sisi to the presidency has started to soften. But nevertheless many Egyptians are happy about Morsi’s predicament. Writing ahead of the verdict, Esmat el-Merghany, the head of a lawyer’s union, said: “Morsi betrayed the nation and is guilty of the ultimate treason because of his espionage for Qatar. It’s normal that he should get the death sentence for the crimes he committed against his people.”
The verdict ends any hope of a pause in the crackdown against Islamists, argues Yasser El-Shimy, an Egyptian academic based at Boston University. “Morsi being an Islamist leader and a symbolic figure … has to be punished harshly in order to convey the unambiguous message to all Islamists and other activists that there is no going back to the pre-June 2013 democratic transition. Ultimately, if the verdict is carried out, it will push many Islamist youths further away from peaceful political participation, and make it virtually impossible to achieve political reconciliation in Egypt.”
In a separate development, Morsi’s predecessor, Mubarak, is expected to be released from prison in the near future, four years after he was first interned following his ousting in 2011.
Additional reporting by Manu Abdo
Islamists warn of backlash over Mohamed Morsi death sentence | World news | The Guardian
