Category Archives: Muslim Brotherhood

In Egypt the old state has won, to great applause

Sarah Carr writes: A referendum on the constitution is rarely about the document itself, but more than any previous plebiscite this vote is about sticking two fingers up at the Brotherhood and expressing varying levels of confidence/adoration in the army and more specifically the person of Commander-in-Chief Abdel Fatah el Sisi.

Voters repeatedly linked a “yes” to the constitution with a “yes to Sisi” yesterday. His picture was everywhere, and in some quarters he is regarded as the second coming. One man actually said this, that Sisi was “sent” to protect Egypt. I remembered 2011, and the Islamists and their rhetoric, a “yes” vote is a vote for Islam. It’s still all about interchangeable deities in the end.

One interesting aspect of all this is that Mubarak was noticeably absent from the military effigies (Nasser, Sadat, Sisi) plastered everywhere, but his spirit permeated everything. He bequeathed the current situation to Egypt, after all, the us vs. them mindset, the suspicion of political or cultural otherness, that idea that Egypt, and Egyptian identity, must be a fortress against interlopers and the ease with which the threat of such interlopers, real or imagined, can steer the country’s course.

This referendum is part of that legacy. It is another brick in the wall of the security state and its relentless homogeneity. In January 2011, there was a small crack put in that wall and we were given a glimpse of a new possibility, of new faces, and new political forces. But through a tragic and increasingly inevitable combination of their own inexperience, blind trust and the public’s unwillingness to back an unknown entity, they were eventually shut out of the public space and we were reduced to the same old tired binary of Islamists and the old state — just like Mubarak promised us.

Now the old state has won, to great applause, and there is absolutely no room for difference, all in the name of stability and progress. [Continue reading…]

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Egypt’s military rulers plot to provoke uprising in Gaza

Reuters reports: After crushing the Muslim Brotherhood at home, Egypt’s military rulers plan to undermine the Palestinian militant group Hamas, which runs the neighboring Gaza Strip, senior Egyptian security officials told Reuters.

The aim, which the officials say could take years to pull off, includes working with Hamas’s political rivals Fatah and supporting popular anti-Hamas activities in Gaza, four security and diplomatic officials said.

Since it seized power in Egypt last summer, Egypt’s military has squeezed Gaza’s economy by destroying most of the 1,200 tunnels used to smuggle food, cars and weapons to the coastal enclave, which is under an Israeli blockade.

Now Cairo is becoming even more ambitious in its drive to eradicate what it says are militant organizations that threaten its national security.

Intelligence operatives, with help from Hamas’s political rivals and activists, plan to undermine the credibility of Hamas, which seized control of Gaza in 2007 after a brief civil war against the Fatah movement led by Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

According to the Egyptian officials, Hamas will face growing resistance by activists who will launch protests similar to those in Egypt that have led to the downfall of two presidents since the Arab Spring in 2011. Cairo plans to support such protests in an effort to cripple Hamas.

“Gaza is next,” said one senior security official, who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. “We cannot get liberated from the terrorism of the Brotherhood in Egypt without ending it in Gaza, which lies on our borders.” [Continue reading…]

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Puppet ad draws terror accusations in Egypt

Al Jazeera reports: Prosecutors have questioned officials in one of Egypt’s largest telecommunications companies over an online advertisement featuring a puppet, which a controversial blogger has accused of delivering a coded message linked to the Muslim Brotherhood group, the company said.

The accusations made on Wednesday against Vodafone Egypt’s ad starring well-known puppet Abla Fahita comes days after the military-back interim government designated the Brotherhood a terrorist organisation.

The government accused the Brotherhood of orchestrating a series of attacks by Sinai militants, but has provided little evidence to prove the connection. The Brotherhood denies the accusations.

Ahmed “Spider,” a self-style youth activist and a strong supporter of ousted President Hosni Mubarak, said a coded message about an upcoming attack is included in the details of the puppet ad.

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Brotherhood confronts Egypt ‘anti-terror’ law

Al Jazeera reports: After much pulling and tugging between Egypt’s military-backed government and the Muslim Brotherhood, the state has adopted a highly controversial “anti-terrorism” law that effectively freezes any legal activity from the country’s largest opposition group.

The law, which criminalises any kind of participation linked to the Muslim Brotherhood, intensifies Egypt’s political polarisation. The legislation comes ahead of a nationwide referendum on the country’s constitution set for January 5.

The bill was passed after a bomb blast killed 16 people on December 24 in the Nile Delta city of Al Mansoura. Although the law does not include Ansar Bayt al-Makdis, the an al-Qaeda-linked group who claimed responsibility for the attack, legislation does target the Muslim Brotherhood who condemned the assault and whose supporters have been staging daily peaceful protests since the army-led overthrow of President Mohamed Morsi on July 3.

Despite previous government pledges not to shun any faction from the political scene, the law bolts the lock on the return of a party that has won every vote since the 2011 uprising that toppled Hosni Mubarak.

Human Rights Watch has said the law banning the Brotherhood is “politically driven”.

Anti-coup protesters, mostly sympathisers of the Muslim Brotherhood, remain determined to stay on the streets, even if it means risking arrest. [Continue reading…]

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In harshest move yet, Egypt declares Muslim Brotherhood a ‘terrorist’ group

The New York Times reports: Egypt’s military-backed leaders on Wednesday designated the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization, outlawing the country’s most successful political movement and vowing to treat anyone who belongs to it — or even takes part in its activities — as a terrorist.

The country’s leaders have been locked in conflict with the movement since July, when the military deposed Mohamed Morsi, Egypt’s first democratically elected president and a former Brotherhood leader. The state’s security forces have killed hundreds of the movement’s supporters during protests against Mr. Morsi’s removal. Most of the Brotherhood’s leaders and thousands of its members have been imprisoned.

Now, with Wednesday’s decision, the government signaled its determination to cut off any air to the more than 80-year-old Islamist organization.

Analysts said the designation opened the door to the most severe crackdown on the movement in decades, requiring hundreds of thousands of Brotherhood members to abandon the group or face prison, and granting the military and the police new authority to violently suppress protests. The decision makes it a crime to promote the Brotherhood and could also outlaw hundreds of welfare and charitable organizations affiliated with the movement that help Egyptians who have little access to government services.

The move came a day after officials blamed the Brotherhood for a suicide bombing at a police headquarters north of Cairo that killed 16 people, though on Wednesday a separate group — Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, which has derided the Brotherhood for its lack of militancy — claimed responsibility for that bombing. [Continue reading…]

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Repression deepens in Egypt

Sharif Abdel Kouddous writes: The Abu Zaabal prison complex lies some twenty miles northeast of Cairo, where the dense urban cacophony of the capital quickly gives way to rolling fields, rubbish-strewn canals and small clusters of hastily built red brick buildings. Outside the main gate—a pair of large metal doors flanked by Pharaonic-themed columns—sit four army tanks, their long snouts pointed up and out.

Gehad Khaled, a 20-year-old with an easy laugh and youthful intensity, has been coming to Abu Zaabal on a regular basis for nearly four months to visit her imprisoned husband. Abdullah Al-Shamy was among hundreds rounded up on August 14, the day security forces violently stormed two sit-ins in Cairo and Giza that formed the epicenter of support for the deposed president, Mohamed Morsi, leaving up to 1,000 people dead.

Abdullah was at the Rabaa Al-Adeweya sit-in for work. As a correspondent for the satellite news channel Al Jazeera, the 25-year-old journalist had been stationed at the pro-Morsi encampment for six weeks, becoming a familiar face to the channel’s viewers in one of the summer’s biggest international news stories.

Gehad would visit Abdullah at the sit-in, where he was working around the clock. The two had been married in September 2012, though Abdullah spent little time at home because of regular deployments to countries like Mali, Libya, Ghana and Turkey for Al Jazeera. “The longest period we spent together since we were married was in Rabaa,” she says with a smile.

Now, Gehad sees Abdullah just once every two weeks inside Abu Zaabal, waiting hours each time for a fifteen-minute visit. She brings him food, water, clothes, newspapers, books, toiletries and other necessities to alleviate the austere conditions inside Egypt’s jails. [Continue reading…]

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Most Egyptians oppose ouster of Mursi, poll shows

Bloomberg reports: Most Egyptians said the army was wrong to topple elected President Mohamed Mursi in July, and support for Mursi and his Muslim Brotherhood held up after his July ouster, according to a poll by Zogby Research Services LLC.

The study, conducted in September, found 51 percent of respondents said Mursi’s overthrow was a mistake, compared with 46 percent who said the army was right. It was published on the website of the Arab American Institute.

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Egyptian women jailed for 11 years for peaceful protests

Al Jazeera reports: A group of women have been jailed for 11 years for a peaceful protest in Alexandria, as Egypt’s interim prime minister gave a strong defence of a law further restricting public demonstrations.

The women, supporters of the deposed president Mohamed Morsi, received 11-year jail sentences on Wednesday for forming a human chain and passing out flyers earlier this month. Seven minors among the group were remanded to juvenile detention until they reach legal age. The youngest in the group is 15 years old.

Six men, described by prosecutors as Muslim Brotherhood leaders, were sentenced to 15-year terms, accused of being members of a “terrorist organisation”.

In a news conference also on Wednesday, Hazem el-Beblawi, the interim prime minister, defended a new law requires which citizens to apply for permission before marching as a “necessary step”.

“The cabinet confirms that it will apply the law fully to show its support for the police in the face of terrorism. The law is subject to change, but through the proper channels.” [Continue reading…]

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Egypt expels Turkish ambassador, Turkey retaliates

Reuters reports: Egypt said on Saturday it was expelling Turkey’s ambassador and accused Ankara of backing organizations bent on undermining the country – an apparent reference to the Muslim Brotherhood of ousted Egyptian president Mohamed Mursi.

Turkey, which had forged close ties with Egypt under Mursi, responded by declaring the Egyptian ambassador, currently out of the country, persona non grata.

“We are saddened by this situation,” Turkey’s foreign ministry said in a statement. “But responsibility before history belongs to Egypt’s temporary administration which came to power under the extraordinary circumstances of the July 3 coup.”

Turkey has emerged as one of the fiercest international critics of Mursi’s removal, calling it an “unacceptable coup”. Mursi’s Muslim Brotherhood, which has been staging protests calling for his reinstatement, has close ties with Turkish Prime Minster Tayyip Erdogan’s AK Party.

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Egypt’s Brotherhood offers talks to end Morsi crisis

AFP reports: An Islamist coalition led by the Muslim Brotherhood on Saturday offered negotiations to end the deadly tumult since Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi’s overthrow, without explicitly insisting on his reinstatement.

The coalition “calls on all revolutionary forces and political parties and patriotic figures to enter a deep dialogue on exiting the current crisis,” it said in a statement.

The proposal comes after more than 1,000 people, mostly Morsi supporters, were killed in clashes with police and thousands more arrested following his overthrow by the military on July 3.

The coalition, which has organised weekly protests despite the crackdown, insisted in its statement on keeping up “peaceful opposition”, but said it wanted a “consensus for the public good of the country”.

Much of the Brotherhood’s leadership has been put on trial, including Morsi himself.

“We have no conditions, and neither should they,” Imam Youssef, a leader of the Islamist coalition member the Asala party, told AFP.

But he said the talks must lead to a “democratic” solution, and the coalition wanted them to start within two weeks.

The Islamists were prepared to respect the demands of the millions of protesters who called for Morsi’s ouster, Youssef said.

“We want a democratic solution, and it does not necessarily mean we have to be in power,” he added. [Continue reading…]

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The friendly ties between Egyptian intelligence and the CIA

David Ignatius writes: The U.S.-Egyptian relationship has been through some rocky months since the June 30 military coup that toppled President Mohamed Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood. But the strain doesn’t seem to have diminished cooperation between the two countries’ intelligence services.

Gen. Mohammed Farid el-Tohamy, the director of Egypt’s General Intelligence Service, said had been “no change” in his organization’s relationship with U.S. spy agencies, despite delay of some U.S. weapons deliveries to the Egyptian military and talk of new Egyptian military contacts with Russia.

“Cooperation between friendly services is in a completely different channel than the political channel,” Tohamy said. “I’m in constant contact with [Director] John Brennan at the CIA and the local station chief, more than with any other service worldwide.” [Continue reading…]

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‘The Brotherhood can survive’: Inside the war on Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood

Patrick Martin reports: The local headquarters of the Muslim Brotherhood and its political wing, the Freedom and Justice Party, are burned-out shells in this Suez Canal port city, the birthplace of the Brotherhood 85 years ago. The remaining Brothers are trying to evade arrest by the authorities; the angry ones are considering a move across the canal to the lawless Sinai and a resort to violence.

There are many who see this as the end of the line for the once mighty Islamist organization. Its popularity with the people is at rock bottom and its leaders locked up, including deposed president Mohammed Morsi.

Other Brothers are hiding out or fleeing the country, and more than 1,000 of its supporters were killed in a brutal crackdown when the army seized power in August. To add further injury, an Egyptian court on Wednesday upheld a ruling banning the Brotherhood and all its branches from operating, and ordering the confiscation of its assets.

There’s nothing of value left in the office of the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) on El Gomhoreya Street in the centre of Ismaila. It’s a poor neighbourhood, a block inland from the fishing port and just down the road from the luxurious English homes that run along the corniche.

Next to the old Ibad ar-Rahman mosque, the FJP office sits around the corner from where the Brotherhood’s founder, Hassan al-Banna, taught school by day and preached the saving virtues of Islam in coffee houses by night. He set up The Society of Muslim Brothers in 1928 when six Suez Canal workers came to him complaining of the injustices suffered at the hand of the foreign owners.

Ismailia is normally a laid back city. People here tell you that people in Cairo work too hard. There’s lots of green space and the waterfront is never far away. There’s even a sign – in Arabic – that says “Smile, you’re in Ismailia.”

These days, there’s a tank parked beside the sign and a military checkpoint behind that. Down the road, 10 tanks stand in front of the courthouse.

Posters of Mr. Morsi still can be seen everywhere; most of them, however, have been defaced.

Mustafa Shaltoot, 27, has a tell-tale zebiba (it means raisin) on his forehead – the dark abrasion that comes from touching your forehead to the ground in regular prayer. But like a lot of young followers of the Muslim Brotherhood these days, his formerly thick beard has been shaved to about a three-day growth.

Mr. Shaltoot brought a journalist inside what remained of the FJP office, out of sight from the street. “What happened after the coup was terrifying,” he said, referring to the Egyptian army’s ousting of Mr. Morsi and the deadly crackdown on his movement that followed. “I’m afraid all the time. I’m afraid the security will see me talking to you,” he said.

“But this is our history,” he said. “It was this way under [Gamal Abdul] Nasser,” referring to the Egyptian president who ordered a crackdown on the Brotherhood in 1952. “We will survive this too.” [Continue reading…]

Meanwhile, BBC News reports: Egypt’s state of emergency and curfew have been lifted, the government has announced.

The move came two days earlier than expected, after a court ruling.

The state of emergency and the night-time curfew were introduced on 14 August after security forces forcibly ended sit-ins in support of ousted Islamist President Mohammed Morsi.

The measures had been due to last a month, but the government extended them for two more months on 12 September.

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Morsi defiant in brief court appearance

The New York Times reports: Held incommunicado for the four months since his overthrow as president, Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood walked into a makeshift courtroom on Monday for his new role as a defendant in a murder trial.

But Mr. Morsi, dressed in a blue suit, refused even to wear the usual all-white prisoner’s costume.

“I want a microphone so I can talk to you,” Mr. Morsi shouted three times from a special defendant’s cage constructed to obscure him from public view. “There is a military coup in the country,” he shouted, adding, “I am the president of the republic, according to the Constitution of the state, and I am forcibly detained!”

Repeatedly cited by the new government as evidence of its adherence to the rule of law, the trial instead threatened to embarrass its leadership, with the defendants and their lawyers seizing a rare platform to question the military takeover. Islamists around Egypt were galvanized by Mr. Morsi’s show of defiance as the judge failed to gavel him into silence and instead adjourned the trial for two months.

And the timing, analysts said, also proved awkward for Secretary of State John Kerry. On a visit to Cairo just a day before, he had said that — despite a series of mass killings of protesters, the shutdown of opposition news media outlets and apparently politicized trials like Mr. Morsi’s — “there are indications” that the generals who ousted Egypt’s first freely elected president intended to restore democracy.

The visit was “unbelievable timing,” said Michael Wahid Hanna, an Egypt scholar at the Century Foundation in New York. He argued that opponents of the Islamists would see the trip as an American effort to protect Mr. Morsi, while Islamists would hear Mr. Kerry’s “soft and optimistic statements as a U.S. blessing to the new military-led political order.”

It was the second criminal prosecution of an ousted Egyptian president in the same venue within less than three years. But in a reversal of the dynamic during the live broadcast of Hosni Mubarak’s trial in 2011, on Monday the hearing quickly devolved into a tug of war over just how much attention Mr. Morsi could receive.

“Mubarak was hiding from the cameras, and now they are hiding the cameras from Morsi,” said Emad Shahin, a political scientist at the American University in Cairo, who called the new government’s rush to trial “a miscalculation” because “this will increase the perception of him as a hero, an icon for the resistance.”

Ahmed el-Arainy, 42, a Brotherhood organizer, called the opening of the trial “a good day.”

“They just wanted to show him shaken in a cage, a defendant in prison clothes, but, God bless him, he stood in defense of his cause and not theirs,” he said. “What is on trial is the country, and its will to change,” he added. [Continue reading…]

Earlier this week, two Canadians, Toronto filmmaker John Greyson, and emergency room medical doctor Tarek Loubani, described their experiences in Egypt where they were recently released after 50 days in detention.

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Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood finds havens abroad

The Washington Post reports: Very few of the leaders of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood escaped the recent military-led crackdown on their movement. Some of those who did flew out of Cairo after paying thousands of dollars in bribes to airport security officials, while others took more convoluted routes, boarding planes in distant airports en route to friendlier nations.

One of those friendly nations is Qatar, the tiny, oil-rich Persian Gulf state that helped bankroll rebels and Islamist democracy advocates throughout the Arab Spring and is now quietly absorbing the exiles that one country’s stumbling experiment in democracy has generated.

Cast out by — or, perhaps, saved from — the harshest political crackdown in recent Egyptian history, a handful of Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist leaders found refuge here in the Qatari capital, while others traveled to Istanbul, London and Geneva.

The exiles’ community is small, disorganized and ideologically diverse, ranging from fairly liberal Islamist politicians to hard-line Salafists — groups that less than two years ago competed against each other in Egypt’s parliamentary and presidential elections.

Now, as they push back against the July coup that toppled their country’s first democratically elected president, Mohamed Morsi, they are on the same team.

At the same time, an exile leadership is starting to take shape here among the shimmering high-rises of Doha. Several of the exiles are living temporarily in hotel suites paid for by Qatar’s state-run Arabic satellite network Al Jazeera — and it is in those suites and hotel lobbies that the future of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood and, more broadly, the strategy and ideology of political Islam in the country may well be charted.

“We are not the kind to escape. We do not prefer exile. We have a task: to communicate the crisis and deliver the message to the world,” said Ehab Shiha, the chairman of the Egyptian Salafist al-Asala party, as he sat in a hotel lobby in Doha. [Continue reading…]

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Morsi calls trial in Egypt ‘illegitimate,’ and case is delayed

When America’s obsequious Secretary of State John Kerry met Egypt’s ruling generals yesterday, he claimed they appear to be following a “road map” back to democracy — even though they have not pledged to lift emergency rule. Neither did he raise the issue of Morsi’s trial.

The New York Times reports: As Egypt’s new military-led government consolidates its power, Mohamed Morsi, the deposed president, went on trial on Monday, facing charges of inciting the murder of protesters, but he rejected the court’s authority and proclaimed himself to be the country’s legitimate ruler.

The trial got off to a late start, and the case was soon adjourned until Jan. 8.

The trial’s brief opening was Mr. Morsi’s first public appearance since his removal from office on July 3 and, in a dizzying turn for Egypt, the second criminal trial of a former head of state in less than three years. Former President Hosni Mubarak, ousted in February 2011 and now under house arrest in a military hospital, is facing a retrial at the same site, the auditorium of a police academy.

According to the website of Al Ahram, Egypt’s flagship state newspaper, the trial got under way as Mr. Morsi and 14 other Islamist defendants appeared in a caged dock and court officials called out their names. But news reports said the hearing was first delayed and then suspended after Mr. Morsi refused to dress in prison clothing and chants by his co-defendants drowned out the proceedings.

Journalists who were allowed into the courtroom were not permitted to take telephones or other communications devices, limiting the flow of information. But witnesses in the courtroom said that Mr. Morsi declared, “This trial is illegitimate,” and said he was still Egypt’s lawful president.

Mr. Morsi’s Islamist allies in the Muslim Brotherhood had called for major protests against the trial, and the Interior Ministry said it had deployed thousands of riot police officers to secure the streets. Shortly before 11 a.m., as the trial began, the streets remained quiet, but the number of demonstrators began to grow from only a few dozen to perhaps 100 in two locations outside the court.

Pro-Morsi demonstrators gathered in larger numbers at the Supreme Constitutional Court in the Maadi district of southern Cairo, witnesses said.

BBC News reports on the changing tactics among Muslim Brotherhood protesters.

Protesters gather in small numbers in many different locations rather than holding mass rallies in one location like that of the Rabaa al-Adawiya or al-Nahda squares.

It’s been a little over two months now since security forces cracked down on those two squares where supporter of former President Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood gathered in their thousands.

Since then almost all the leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood, including its supreme guide, have been arrested.

Many supporters have also been rounded up and thrown in jail. A recent incident in Alexandria saw more than 20 women supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood arrested in clashes with residents of one of the city’s most crowded neighbourhoods.

But all of that doesn’t seem to deter supporters of the ousted president from taking to the streets.

“It’s important to keep the momentum going,” said Yomna, a university student in her final year.

Yomna didn’t want her last name revealed. She said that as a Morsi supporter, she had to be careful not to reveal her identity. That alone shows how different things have become here in Egypt.

Despite what happened in Rabaa or even because of it, many Muslim Brotherhood supporters insist that the only way for them is the street.

“We’re tired but we are not defeated, we’re still in the street because people know that this is where they should be,” Yomna said.

“This trial will be a chance for us to regroup and unite again,” she added.

“Seeing that they have put our president on trial will make us even more determined.”

Despite this determination, Yomna admits that these past few months have been extremely difficult for her and many like her who still want Mohammed Morsi to be returned to office.

“Look what happened to those girls,” she said, referring to the women who were arrested in Alexandria recently.

“As a Morsi supporter I feel vulnerable to arrest at any time now. I’ll keep protesting but I know next time it could be me.

“Sometimes I feel like I no longer live in my own country.”

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Egypt: No investigations after 1,300 protesters have been killed

Human Rights Watch: Egypt’s authorities have yet to announce any move to investigate security force killings of protesters on October 6, 2013. Almost four weeks after police used lethal force to break up protests by Muslim Brotherhood supporters, the authorities have not said they have questioned, or intend to question, security forces about their use of firearms that day.

The clashes left 57 people dead throughout Egypt, according to the Health Ministry, with no police deaths reported.

“In dealing with protest after protest, Egyptian security forces escalate quickly and without warning to live ammunition, with deadly results,” said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “Thirteen hundred people have died since July. What will it take for the authorities to rein in security forces or even set up a fact-finding committee into their use of deadly force?”

Judicial authorities have held security services to account in only one case since the military removed President Mohamed Morsy from power in early July, setting off a wave of protests by supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood. On October 22, Public Prosecutor Hisham Barakat ordered the pretrial detention of four police officers for the deaths of 37 detainees they were transporting to Abu Zaabal prison on August 18. He referred them for trial on charges of “negligence and involuntary manslaughter” for shooting tear gas into the locked van. The detainees suffocated. The trial of the police officers opened on October 29.

“Egypt showed in the case of the police officers who fired teargas into a truck full of detainees that it is capable of holding security forces accountable,” Stork said. “It should do the same when police officers open fire on largely peaceful demonstrators.”

Throughout the past three months, in spite of over 1,300 people killed during demonstrations, the authorities have not established a fact-finding committee or attempted to rein in security services.

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Egypt’s once ousted General Tohamy is now more powerful than ever

The New York Times reports: A year after the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak, the man responsible for rooting out government corruption, Gen. Mohamed Farid el-Tohamy, faced a very public barrage of allegations that he had deliberately covered up years of cronyism and self-dealing.

President Mohamed Morsi promptly fired the general, prosecutors opened an investigation, the news filled the papers and his career appeared to end in disgrace.

But now the general is back, and more powerful than ever. His protégé and friend, Gen. Abdul-Fattah el-Sisi, ousted Mr. Morsi about four months ago, and virtually the first move by the new government was to rehabilitate General Tohamy and place him in charge of the general intelligence service, one of the most powerful positions in Egypt.

Western diplomats and Egyptians close to the government say General Tohamy has emerged as the leading advocate of the lethal crackdown on Mr. Morsi’s Islamist supporters in the Muslim Brotherhood, in a drive to eviscerate the movement.

Any public trace of the corruption charges — leveled by one of the general’s own investigators — has disappeared.

“What happened to the prosecutors’ claim of evidence of his corruption and obstruction of justice?” asked Hossam Bahgat, one of the few Egyptian human rights advocates willing to publicly criticize General Tohamy. “Why was he ousted in that humiliating fashion? Why was he brought back from retirement the morning after the military takeover?” he continued. “There is zero public discussion of these very serious questions.” [Continue reading…]

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High-ranking Muslim Brotherhood leader seized in Egypt

The New York Times reports: Egyptian security forces on Wednesday captured Essam el-Erian, one of the last few prominent leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood still at large after a crackdown on the group that began with the ouster of President Mohamed Morsi, its ally.

The seizure of Mr. Erian, a senior leader in the Brotherhood’s political arm and an adviser to the president, appears to complete the incarceration of the organization’s top leaders less than 18 months after they stood on the brink of consolidating power over the presidency and Parliament. He was among the most visible and outspoken leaders of the Brotherhood, Egypt’s mainstream Islamist movement, and his arrest caps a career that has traced the group’s evolution through years of repression, internal reforms, electoral victories and political failure.

The charges against Mr. Erian were not immediately clear, although many of his fellow Brotherhood leaders have been arrested on allegations of incitement to violence. [Continue reading…]

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