T he death of Egypt’s first freely elected head of state, Mohamed Morsi, on June 17 at the age of 67 under tragic circumstances has brought the spotlight back on the authoritarian military regime that is currently in power. Morsi, who was removed in a military coup in 2013 after barely completing a year in office, had been languishing in jail along with thousands of other political activists. Morsi’s family had been complaining to the authorities about the fragile state of his health and seeking urgent medical care since he was incarcerated six years ago. According to a fact-finding British parliamentary delegation that visited Egypt in 2018, Morsi was kept in solitary confinement for 11 hours every day in the notorious Tora Prison and was allowed only one hour of exercise. The prison, according to one of its former wardens, “was designed so that those who go in don’t come out again, unless dead”.
Morsi was a diabetic and had various other serious health issues. According to his family and supporters, he was deprived of essential medicines for diabetes, high blood pressure and liver disease. The authorities did not pay heed to repeated public warnings that lack of medicines and treatment would prove fatal to the former President. Human Rights Watch said that Morsi “was obviously singled out for mistreatment” and not even provided with “basic prisoner rights”.
On the day of his death, Morsi collapsed in a Cairo court where he had been summoned for a hearing along with other leaders of the banned Muslim Brotherhood (M.B.). The prisoners were all confined to a cage as is the practice in Egyptian courtrooms. The accused have to either keep standing or sit on the floor during the long hours the judge hears the arguments. Morsi and his colleagues had requested that they be spared the ordeal of frequently being present in court under demeaning conditions. Before falling unconscious, Morsi defiantly told the presiding judge that he continued to be the “legitimate President” of Egypt.
The M.B. accused the Egyptian government of “assassinating” Morsi by subjecting him to years of mistreatment in prison. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey was the first head of state to hold the Egyptian government responsible for Morsi’s demise. “History will never forgive those tyrants who were responsible for his death by putting him in jail and threatening him with execution,” he said in a televised speech. The ruling Justice and Development (AK) Party in Turkey has close links with the M.B. Qatar and Malaysia were other notable countries that expressed their condolences. Muslim Brotherhood parties in Jordan and other Arab nations blamed the military government for Morsi’s death.
The current military government under President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi had charged the former President with committing multiple crimes, including acts of espionage. The Egyptian state demanded the death penalty for Morsi and other senior M.B. leaders for spying on behalf of Qatar and Hamas. Hamas, which administers the blockaded Gaza Strip, is an offshoot of the M.B. During the brief interregnum of civilian rule in Egypt, the embattled people of Gaza had reason to hope that the stifling blockade would be lifted and their miseries alleviated. But that was not to be. The Kingdom of Qatar is viewed as being close to the M.B. This is a reason for the current political impasse between the Saudis and the Qataris. Egypt and the United Arab Emirates are among the strongest backers of Saudi Arabia in its confrontation with Qatar.
The Egyptian authorities were unrelenting in their persecution of the M.B. Morsi, like other top M.B. leaders, had already been given multiple jail sentences. But he was brought for retrial after the prosecution piled more charges against him. The party’s “supreme guide”, Mohamed Badie, was sentenced to seven terms of life imprisonment and was also given a death sentence. It was Morsi who selected El-Sisi as the country’s Defence Minister after taking over as President. Gen. El-Sisi had sworn fealty to the civilian government, but from day one had conspired to overthrow the popularly elected government.
The “deep state” in Egypt led by the men in khaki since the first Army intervention in 1953 had never reconciled itself to the idea of civilian rule. Gamal Abdel Nasser, the charismatic first President of Egypt, viewed the M.B. as a significant threat. For that matter, Nasser also imprisoned communist leaders despite embracing socialist goals for the country.
The M.B. has always had a strong organisational network in the country despite being banned for long periods of time in the past 70 years. The Egyptian ideologue Hassan al-Banna launched the M.B. in 1928 as an Islamist political and social organisation. It played a big role in the anti-colonial struggle and in the later struggle against the monarchy. The M.B. supported the Army’s overthrow of the monarchy in 1952. However, the two sides fell apart almost immediately.
The socialist and secular policies that were implemented under Nasser did not fit with the Islamist worldview. In fact, the Brotherhood grew closer to the Saudi monarchy after Nasser took over. Many of the Egyptian leaders of the Brotherhood found refuge and hospitality in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia at the time. Things are different now. After the Arab Spring revolution of 2011, the Gulf monarchies started viewing the Muslim Brotherhood as their most dangerous enemy. In elections held in Tunisia and Egypt after the Arab Spring, it was the M.B. that won the popular vote.
After the Egyptian Arab Spring, the ban on the M.B. was lifted. It fought Egypt’s first multiparty elections, in 2012, under the banner of the Freedom and Justice Party. Under the leadership of Morsi, a United States-educated engineer, it narrowly won the elections with 51 per cent of the votes. Morsi was an accidental President. He was nominated as the M.B.’s candidate at the eleventh hour after the judiciary disqualified the party’s first choice for the post.
The Brotherhood had mostly stayed on the sidelines when the protests started in Cairo’s Tahrir Square. But as the protests gained strength, the Brotherhood joined in, though its top leadership kept a low profile. The Brotherhood constituted the main opposition grouping in parliament after the 2005 election held under President Hosni Mubarak. The Brotherhood was allowed to put up candidates in a limited number of seats, which it won easily. It had 20 per cent of the seats in parliament then and could have won many more if the election had been free and fair. The charitable work that the Brotherhood was permitted to do won it support among the poorer sections of Egyptian society and helped it during the parliamentary and presidential elections of 2012.
Once in power in 2012, Morsi tried to clip the wings of the military with his proposal for a new constitution. He temporarily granted himself unlimited powers to deal with the threat coming from the Army and its entrenched supporters in the bureaucracy and the judiciary. But in reality his hands were tied. Before he assumed the presidency, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), the ruling military council, had abrogated all legislative powers, and the Supreme Court, filled by judges appointed during the Mubarak era, dissolved the Lower House of parliament, in which the Brothers had a majority.
The government led by the Brothers did not tinker with the country’s foreign policy. The United States continued to be Egypt’s closest military and strategic ally. Relations with Israel remained unchanged. In August 2012, Morsi annulled the SCAF declaration and announced that he was assuming decree-making powers and selecting a new constitution-making committee. The military successfully stoked the suspicions of secular Egyptians and religious minorities about the intentions of the Brothers. The M.B. had publicly stated that it would never endorse the candidature of a woman or a Coptic Christian for the post of President. The Copts constitute around 10 per cent of the Egyptian population. The Army used the huge protests against the Morsi government in Tahrir Square organised by parties opposed to the M.B. and tacitly supported by the “deep state” as a pretext to depose the newly elected government.
Ironically, during his brief stint in power, Morsi’s popularity had hovered around the 60 per cent mark. The media and the state institutions were, however, still firmly in the hands of the military establishment.
Massacre of civilians
After the military coup launched by El-Sisi, supporters of the Brotherhood gathered at locations across Cairo to protest against the move, and more than 1,150 were killed on August 14, 2013, at four different locations when security forces opened fire on them. It is one of the worst massacres of civilians in recent history. Nobody has been held accountable so far.
El-Sisi has been unrelenting towards the Brotherhood. For that matter, even moderate opposition parties have been thoroughly muzzled. All critics of the government, irrespective of ideology, are dealt with harshly. The media is now totally under government control. During the rule of previous military dictators such as Anwar Sadat and Mubarak, a limited amount of freedom was given to political parties and the media. All that is now a thing of the past.
Although there is muted international criticism of the government, El-Sisi remains in full control. The economy is in dire straits, but he has been given a mandate by the military to be in office until 2030. A stage-managed referendum this year, in which the opposition had no role, overwhelmingly approved of this constitutional change. Under El-Sisi’s prodding, many countries have declared the Muslim Brotherhood a “terrorist” grouping. U.S. President Donald Trump, too, wanted to do so under pressure from the Egyptian government. However, the Pentagon and the U.S. State Department objected to the categorisation. In Syria and Libya, the U.S. and its allies were supporting rebels with close links with the M.B. In Iraq and Yemen, Brotherhood-linked parties are allies of the U.S.
The Egyptian authorities refused permission for the burial of Morsi’s body in his home province of Sharqiya in the Nile delta. Instead, he was interred in a semi-clandestine manner the day after his demise in a cemetery in eastern Cairo. The bodies of some other Brotherhood leaders are also buried there. The United Nations has called for an independent inquiry into the circumstances leading to Morsi’s death. The U.N. Human Rights Council demanded a “prompt, impartial, thorough and transparent investigation”.
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