Ousted Egyptian President Morsi dies after courtroom collapse
CAIRO — Former Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi, imprisoned since the military removed him from office in 2013, died Monday after collapsing in court, officials said, putting the nation’s authoritarian-minded government on the defensive over his treatment in custody.
The country’s first democratically elected president and a leader of the now-outlawed Muslim Brotherhood movement, the 67-year-old California-educated Morsi lasted only a year in office before his defense minister, Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, moved to wrest power from him. El-Sissi has been president ever since.
Egyptian authorities did not immediately disclose the cause of death. The public prosecutor said in a statement that Morsi was taken to a hospital after his collapse, and pronounced dead there. It said there would be a forensic report, but did not say when that was expected.
Security jitters were immediately apparent after the death announcement. Egyptian media said the Interior Ministry had ordered a state of the highest alert.
But in Tahrir Square — the epicenter of the Arab Spring protests that set in motion events that led to Morsi’s presidency — the mood was calm, with little obvious sign of extra police vigilance, although some street cafes were closed. On a nearby bridge over the Nile, Egyptian families were enjoying a night out, with vendors selling balloons and snacks.
Morsi’s death, which followed years of reports of his health deteriorating in prison, was a dramatic new inflection point in Egypt’s tumultuous journey from the massive Arab Spring protests of 2011 that toppled Hosni Mubarak, a dictator of decades’ standing, and the country’s subsequent slide into a new era of repression under el-Sissi.
State television said Morsi collapsed during a court session that was part of his trial on espionage charges, one of dozens of legal proceedings that punctuated his years of imprisonment on an array of charges. At one point he was sentenced to death.
In early courtroom appearances, he defiantly maintained that he was the country’s legitimate president. After he yelled angrily at judges, the authorities soundproofed the cage-like dock in which the accused are customarily held.
The government’s violent 2013 crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood and its supporters, which left hundreds dead and virtually all the movement’s major leaders jailed or in exile, fractured Egyptian society.
Morsi was a deeply unpopular president, his rule marked by a clumsily authoritarian style of governance. But the Brotherhood, while Islamist in nature, was a mainstream movement that had been allowed relative freedom under Mubarak and was enmeshed in many major institutions.
All that changed with Morsi’s ouster. The Brotherhood was branded a terrorist group, and el-Sissi presided over a dismantling of many basic freedoms in the name of fighting terrorism. At the same time, more radical Islamist groups emerged, waging an armed battle against Egypt’s security forces.
The Brotherhood denounced Morsi’s treatment in prison, saying he had been deprived of needed health care and given only rare family visits. Its exiled leaders openly blamed el-Sissi’s government for his abrupt demise.