Egypt targets Brotherhood
Government designates it terrorist group
CAIRO — In a sharp escalation of the confrontation between Egypt’s military-backed administration and the Muslim Brotherhood, the interim government on Wednesday declared the Islamist movement a terrorist organization.
The step gives Egyptian officials even broader authority to move against the Brotherhood, which already has been the target of a harsh and sustained campaign by security forces and the judicial system. Authorities will now have the power to charge any member of the Brotherhood with belonging to a terrorist group, as well as anyone who finances the group or promotes it “verbally or in writing.”
For much of its nearly 90-year history, the movement existed underground but with tacit official acknowledgment of its stature. The government’s latest action, however, could mark a stark new chapter for the Brotherhood. Previously tolerated as a political entity, the group may now face the choice of confrontation or annihilation.
It has been nearly six months since Islamist President Mohammed Morsi was booted out of office by the Egyptian army, following nationwide demonstrations demanding his removal. In the wake of the coup, the interim government has repeatedly declared its intention to set the country on a path toward democracy; it has scheduled a constitutional referendum in January, to be followed by presidential and parliamentary elections.
The decision to declare the Brotherhood a terrorist group, announced in a Cabinet statement, came one day after an audacious attack against a police headquarters in northern Egypt. The car bombing, in the Nile Delta town of Mansoura, killed at least 15 people, most of them police officers.
Within hours of the attack, government officials cast blame on the Brotherhood, which has staged months of street protests demanding Morsi’s reinstatement.
In Washington, the State Department condemned the attack but urged Egypt to have an “inclusive political process.”
“We condemn in the strongest terms the horrific, terrorist bombing (Tuesday). There can be no place for such violence. The Egyptian people deserve peace and calm,” State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said. But she added: “We also note that the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt condemned the bombing shortly after it occurred.”
But on Wednesday, an al-Qaida-inspired group active in the volatile Sinai Peninsula claimed responsibility for the attack. That the Mansoura bombing was apparently carried out by an unaffiliated Islamist organization did not prevent the government’s latest move against the Brotherhood.
The Brotherhood, Morsi’s principal base of support, has already been le- gally banned, with the government given authorization to seize its financial assets.
The former president, together with nearly all of his senior aides, is imprisoned and accused of a wide array of offenses, some of which carry the death penalty. One of his three trials is to resume Jan. 8.
In addition, thousands of rank-and-file members of the organization have been jailed, and about 1,000 of Morsi’s backers were killed in a mid-August crackdown in which Egyptian security forces broke up sprawling sit-in camps in the capital and elsewhere.
The group claiming responsibility for the Mansoura attack is Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, or Partisans of Jerusalem, an Islamist militant group that until now had mainly been associated with attacks against security forces in the Sinai Peninsula.
In its statement, the group appeared to warn that it considers police and soldiers anywhere in Egypt a target — together with those associated with the “apostate” military-backed interim government.
Calling the bombed security building in Mansoura “a venue for tyranny … against Islam and Muslims,” the group repeated a call to members of the security forces to desert “if they want to hold fast to their lives and their religion.”
The statement also identified the person who, it said, carried out the vehicle bombing. The Interior Ministry confirmed that the bombing had been a suicide attack.
Ansar Beit al-Maqdis has staged at least one major strike in Cairo — a suicide bombing in September that targeted Interior Minister Mohammed Ibrahim but failed to kill him.
The army tried unsuccessfully last week to capture at least two important figures in the group, but a raid in northern Sinai turned into a firefight that left two soldiers dead and led the military to send in attack helicopters to back up its ground forces.