Reuters reports: Mahmoud Badr, whose petition campaign helped to bring down Egypt’s Islamist president, insists the bloodshed that has followed is a necessary price for saving the nation from the Muslim Brotherhood.

And he has a message for U.S. President Barack Obama, who has expressed alarm at the violent crackdown on the Brotherhood that has led to more than 700 deaths: “Don’t lecture us on how to deal with the Brotherhood’s terrorism.”

As for aid money, he says, Obama can keep it – and “go to hell”.

Badr, like many Egyptians who consider themselves liberals, has little patience with the human rights groups who call the repression a setback for democracy.

“What Egypt is passing through now is the price, a high price, of getting rid of the Brotherhood’s fascist group before it takes over everything and ousts us all,” Badr, 28, told Reuters in a telephone interview.

Reuters now reports: Some 38 supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood died on Sunday in an incident at an Egyptian prison, security and legal sources said, giving conflicting versions of the deaths.

The Interior Ministry did not immediately confirm the death toll, but said in a statement that a number of detainees had tried to escape from a prison on the outskirts of Cairo and had taken a police officer hostage.

In subsequent clashes, the ministry said an undisclosed number of people had died from inhaling tear gas rounds. It added that the officer was freed but badly wounded.

However, offering a different explanation, a legal source told Reuters that the Brotherhood followers had suffocated in the back of a crammed police van while being taken to prison.