The judiciary charged the deposed Muslim Brotherhood-backed President Mohammed Morsi with espionage, killing prison guards and illegally fleeing jail in connection with his 2011 escape—along with dozens of other prisoners—with the alleged help of Palestinian and Lebanese militias, according to Egypt’s state-run media. Mr. Morsi’s lawyers say he is innocent.
Consistent with typical Egyptian judicial procedure, the case was adjourned until Feb. 22 immediately after the judge read the charges against Mr. Morsi and dozens of co-defendants.
In Mr. Morsi’s second appearance before the public since his ouster on July 3, the former president and more than 20 of his Islamist co-defendants appeared before the judge in a glass cage. According to local media, the cage, which was supposedly soundproof, was used to prevent the kind of public protestations that turned a previous trial of Mr. Morsi into a spectacle.
But video of the trial showed a pacing, nervous former president, dressed in white prison garb, angrily shout, “Who are you?” from his cage at the presiding judge, who responded calmly, “I am the head of the criminal court.”
In footage that wasn’t aired on state television, Mr. Morsi’s co-defendants chanted that the trial was “invalid,” according to a state television reporter, a regular refrain of the thousands of Islamists whom the state has arrested since the July 3 coup. But Mr. Morsi took a surprise step toward tacitly acknowledging the courts on Tuesday when he appointed former presidential candidate and Islamist intellectual Selim Al Awa as his lead attorney. Mr. Morsi had long resisted retaining counsel, arguing that such a move would be tantamount to acknowledging the legitimacy of his overthrow and prosecution.
The trial began a day after the top military council endorsed its popular leader, Abdel Fattah Al Sisi, to run for president and the interim government granted him a promotion to field marshal from general. Observers said both moves seemed orchestrated to set him up as the leading potential presidential candidate.
In a reflection of the political anxieties surrounding the trial, the government reversed its commitment on Monday to air Mr. Morsi’s court appearance live. Instead, Egyptian state television announced Tuesday morning that the trial had begun and its footage would air later in the day.
Mr. Morsi’s trial is also unfolding amid an escalation in violent terrorist attacks and assassinations against security forces that many in Egypt’s interim government have blamed on the Brotherhood. On Tuesday morning, an aide to Egypt’s interior minister was assassinated by unknown gunmen as he left his home in the Cairo suburb of Giza.
Half a dozen people were killed when four bombs exploded across Egypt’s capital last Friday. The following day, an Egyptian military helicopter was downed by a surface-to-air missile fired by militants in the restive northern Sinai Peninsula. A Sinai-based Islamist group, Ansar Beit Al Maqdis, claimed responsibility for all of the attacks.
Despite the group’s claims of responsibility, the interim government has responded with a strenuous crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood.
Many activists say the campaign of arrests and suppression of protests represents an upending of the revolutionary order that was established after millions of protesters forced the military-backed autocrat Hosni Mubarak to resign in February 2011. That led to the election of Mr. Morsi, a new parliament and a new constitution before more popular protests forced the Islamist leader from power and another military-backed regime, that of Field Marshal Sisi, replaced him.
Some observers say the judiciary’s aggressive efforts to prosecute Mr. Morsi—he will stand in four separate trials, including one for murder and two for espionage—amount to a judicial vendetta against the Islamist former head of state. Egypt’s judges have tested even the most authoritarian leaders, but since Mr. Mubarak was ousted have flexed their power even more, some observers say.
“The problem with the Egyptian judiciary isn’t lack of independence, it is that they are so independent as to be unaccountable,” said a Western diplomat in Cairo. “There is little balancing check on the power of the judges, including prosecutors, other than the judiciary itself.”
While in office, Mr. Morsi and the judges had an antagonistic relationship. Months after Egypt’s highest court dismissed a parliament filled with Mr. Morsi’s Islamist allies, the president issued a 2012 edict that let him overturn a judicial verdicts. Before the constitutional court could rule on Mr. Morsi’s declaration, the Muslim Brotherhood sent protesters to block the entrance to their chambers.
Since Mr. Morsi’s ouster in July, the judges have shown an “unusual consistency” in ruling against thousands of Brotherhood leaders and their supporters, said Michele Dunne, an Egypt expert and senior associate at the Washington-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
“There was what I think was a very ill-advised struggle for power between the Brotherhood and the judiciary while the Brotherhood was controlling the presidency,” Ms. Dunne said. “The judiciary does seem to be vengeful.”
Alongside the prison-break case, Mr. Morsi faces separate charges of murdering protesters who demonstrated against his rule, insulting Egypt’s judiciary and committing espionage with foreign militants to orchestrate terror attacks that struck Egypt after the military toppled Mr. Morsi’s administration.
Mr. Morsi has faced only the murder charges in court but his lawyers have yet to present any arguments. The opening hearing in the murder case in early November was immediately adjourned to a later date—a typical convention of Egyptian courts.
The charges to which Mr. Morsi answered on Tuesday are implausible, say Mr. Morsi’s lawyers. Mr. Morsi stands accused of breaking out of Wadi El Natrun prison, north of Cairo, along with more than 130 other mostly Islamist co-defendants on Jan. 30, 2011—the height of the uprising against Mr. Mubarak, who suppressed the Brotherhood.
Mr. Morsi and his allies were among an estimated 20,000 other inmates who escaped jail in late January 2011, according to estimates by the Egyptian media. He and the other Islamists had been arrested only days before and had yet to be charged. The reasons behind the mass prison escape remain unknown.
But Amir Salem, the private attorney who filed the prison-break charges against Mr. Morsi, maintains that the former president and other Islamists escaped from more than 40 different prisons with the help of hundreds of commandos from Hamas and Hezbollah, the Palestinian and Lebanese militias.
Mr. Salem said he found evidence of this collaboration among some 55,000 pages of case filings that he reviewed while helping to prosecute Mr. Mubarak on charges of murdering protesters two years ago. Mr. Mubarak is currently living at a military hospital where he is reportedly receiving treatment for an advanced heart condition as he awaits a retrial on accusations of killing the protesters who rose up against him in 2011.
Mr. Salem said the filings contained testimony from security directors in the Sinai Peninsula who described how the Gaza-based militants infiltrated Egypt.
“It was totally ignored,” said Mr. Salem of the case files. “It was like getting the puzzle together.”
The police repressed the testimony earlier, said Mr. Salem, because they were embarrassed at their own inability to stop the foreign invasion.
A spokesman for Egypt’s public prosecutor didn’t return repeated requests for comment, nor did Egypt’s Ministry of Interior, which administers the police.
In a telephone interview, Muslim Brotherhood lawyer Mohammed Al Damati said he couldn’t comment on the charges because the court has prevented him from obtaining a copy of the case file. Mr. Damati and his legal team said they have spent most of the past several weeks applying for permits just to attend the trial along with Mr. Morsi and his dozens of co-defendants.
In addition, said Mr. Damati, the interim government’s official designation of the Brotherhood as a terrorist group last month has made any lawyer who defends a Brotherhood client suspect in the eyes of the court.
Mr. Damati’s only hope, he said, is to petition all four separate courts for retrials until after what he describes as a national anti-Brotherhood hysteria becomes calm enough for justice to be served.
“If we examine the atmosphere, we find that the circumstances are not suitable,” said Mr. Damati. “We have to have the right environment for justice, where the accused is given a chance to have a free and fair trial.”
____________________________________________
http://wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303277704579348320013532960?mg=reno64-wsj&;url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424052702303277704579348320013532960.html
The Photos:
Toppled Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi stands inside a glass-encased metal cage in a courtroom in Cairo on Tuesday. Associated Press
A poster of ousted president Mohammed Morsi is seen on the windscreen of a car during clashes between his supporters and security forces in Nasr City, Cairo, on Jan. 8. Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
