A defiant Morsi says he is still president
Print Edition
Ousted Egyptian leader Mohamed Morsi struck a defiant tone on the first day of his trial yesterday, chanting “Down with military rule,” and calling himself the country’s only “legitimate” president.
Morsi, an Islamist who was toppled by the army in July after mass protests against him, appeared angry and interrupted the session repeatedly, prompting a judge eventually to adjourn the trial, which barely got underway, to January 8.
Opponents of Egypt’s army-backed government say the trial is part of a campaign to crush Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood movement and revive a police state reminiscent of Hosni Mubarak’s three-decades of autocratic rule that ended in a 2011 popular revolt.
Morsi, 62, who spent time in Mubarak’s jails before becoming Egypt’s first freely elected president after the country’s “Arab Spring” revolution, found himself behind bars again facing charges of inciting violence that could carry the death penalty. It is the second time in just over two years that an overthrown president has been in court in Egypt. The trial is taking place in the same venue where Mubarak has also been facing a retrial for complicity in killing protesters.
State television aired brief footage of Morsi, the first public sighting of the former president since his overthrow. After stepping out of a white van and buttoning his jacket, he appeared in a cage in a court set up in a sprawling police academy beside other Islamist defendants, who were in white prison garb. They applauded when Morsi arrived, gave the Brotherhood’s four-fingered salute, and at times turned their backs on the court.
“This trial is illegitimate,” said Morsi, who was dressed in a dark suit. State media said he had refused to wear prison clothes. “This is a criminal military coup,” he told the court.
Morsi traveled to the heavily guarded courthouse from an undisclosed location by helicopter. Hundreds of his supporters gathered outside the court building. One sign read “The will of the people has been raped,” a reference to the army takeover.
The now-banned Muslim Brotherhood has said it will not abandon the street protests it has staged to pressure the army to reinstate Morsi.
But a heavy security presence across the country served as a reminder of a crackdown earlier this year in which hundreds of Morsi supporters were killed and thousands more rounded up.
Trial proceedings were not aired on state television and journalists were barred from bringing their telephones into the courtroom set up in the Cairo police academy.
During his appearance, Morsi also gave the Brotherhood hand gesture to express his disgust at a raid in August on a protest camp by security forces, who shot dead more than 200 people there at the height of their action against the Islamists.
Morsi and 14 other Islamists face charges of inciting violence relating to the deaths of about a dozen people in clashes outside the presidential palace in December after a decree expanding Morsi’s powers. Morsi was later taken to Borg al-Arab prison in Alexandria.
The military establishment’s return to the forefront of power in Egypt prompted Washington to cut some military aid, but US Secretary of State John Kerry, visiting Cairo on Sunday, expressed guarded optimism about a “return to democracy.”
The power struggle between the Brotherhood and the army-backed government has created more uncertainty in the US-allied country of 85 million, which has a peace treaty with Israel and controls the Suez Canal.
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