‘Biggest conspiracy’ in Cairo court
CAIRO: Deposed Egyptian president Mohamed Mursi appeared in court yesterday on charges of conspiring with foreign groups to commit terrorist acts in Egypt, in a further escalation of the crackdown against his Muslim Brotherhood.
Declaring it “the biggest case of conspiracy in the history of Egypt”, prosecutors have detailed a “terrorist plan” dating from 2005, implicating Palestinian group Hamas and the Shi’ite Islamist government of Iran as well as its Lebanese ally Hezbollah.
Mursi’s Muslim Brotherhood propelled him to victory in the 2012 presidential election but has been driven underground since the army took power in July after mass protests against his rule.
The state, which has declared the Brotherhood a terrorist group, has killed about 1 000 of its members in the streets and jailed thousands of others, including top leaders.
Egypt’s Western allies have exerted little pressure on the Cairo government to end what critics say are widespread human rights violations.
Mursi is on trial in three cases and charged in two others. In the latest one, the prosecutor also charged Brotherhood leaders Mohamed Badie, Khairat El-Shater, Mahmoud Ezzat and others with crimes including acts of terrorism in Egypt and divulging military secrets to a foreign state. A total of 36 are on trial. The Brotherhood accuses the army of staging a coup and reviving a dictatorship, an allegation the military denies.
The prosecutor said the Brotherhood’s plan was to send “elements” to the Gaza Strip for military training by Hezbollah and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards.
Upon their return to Egypt, they would join forces with extremist groups in the Sinai Peninsula, the Egyptian-controlled territory that borders Israel to the east, it said.
After the 2011 uprising that ousted President Hosni Mubarak, the group exploited the chaos to carry out attacks on security forces in North Sinai and elsewhere, it said.
The prosecutor said they aimed to establish an “Islamic emirate” in North Sinai were Mursi not declared president.
Mursi’s presidential aides including Essam El-Haddad, his national security adviser, had leaked secret reports to Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and Hezbollah as a reward for co-operation, prosecutors said.
Hamas has dismissed the charges as “lies”.
After crushing the Muslim Brotherhood at home, Egypt’s military rulers plan to undermine Hamas, which runs the Gaza Strip, senior Egyptian security officials have said.
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.
Egyptian officials see Hamas as a major threat, accusing it of supporting militant groups in the Sinai peninsula which are waging an insurgency. Hamas denies the allegations.