Egypt judge orders Morsy jailed; rival rallies leave 5 dead, 72 injured
-- Deposed Egyptian President
Mohamed Morsy has been ordered jailed for
15 days over accusations of collaborating
with Hamas to get himself and other Muslim
Brotherhood members released from prison
in 2011 and of attacking police stations,
Egyptian media reported Friday.
The news came as large anti-Morsy and pro-
Morsy protests were carried out across Egypt
with sometimes deadly results. At least five
people were killed and 72 injured in clashes
in the port city of Alexandria, the state-run
Middle East News Agency reported, citing
security sources.
The nation's military ousted Morsy, the
country's first democratically elected
president, in early July after days of mass
demonstrations. He has been in detention
since then while an interim government took
shape.
Immediately after the coup, the prosecutor
opened an investigation into claims that
Morsy and top leaders of the Muslim
Brotherhood incited violence and the killing
of protesters. But the charges revealed
Friday stem from an incident that took place
two years ago, before Morsy was elected
president.
The investigation into the jailbreak from
Wadi-Natroun prison in the days after Egypt's
2011 revolution was initiated two weeks ago.
In the incident, 19 Muslim Brotherhood
members are accused of having escaped from
the prison, including Morsy, the state-run
EGYNews reported.
The prosecutors who ordered
the investigations said the
escape was plotted by "foreign
elements" including Hamas, its
military wing, the Islamic
Palestinian Army and
Hezbollah. The Muslim
Brotherhood was named as a
domestic group that
cooperated with those who
broke them out of prison.
Morsy will be questioned about
whether he collaborated with
Hamas in the prison break and
about attacks on police
stations, the government-run
Ahram Online reported.
He is accused of not only
escaping, but also destroying the prison's
official records as well as the intentional
killing and abduction of police officers and
prisoners.
Local media reports at the time show that
Morsy was in prison for only one day.
According to the Al-Masri Al-Youm
newspaper, Morsy was among 500 members
of the Muslim Brotherhood who were
arrested after planning to join the
demonstrations against then-President Hosni
Mubarak. Allegedly, there were no formal
charges against them.
The same newspaper wrote about the
jailbreak that happened the next day. It
quoted a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood
saying that they didn't escape from prison,
but were freed by family members after the
warden and guards fled as the revolution
unfolded.
The military has not commented on Morsy's
whereabouts. When he was first detained, a
Muslim Brotherhood spokesman told CNN
that the deposed leader was initially under
house arrest at the presidential Republican
Guard headquarters in Cairo and later moved
to the Defense Ministry.
A number of Muslim Brotherhood leaders
have been arrested since the coup, including
eight leading Freedom and Justice Party
figures. The party says the arrests were
politically motivated and illegal. Human
rights organizations have backed the political
motivation claim.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called
for the immediate release of Morsy and other
detained leaders "or have their cases
reviewed transparently without delay."
This week, Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, the
head of the military, called for mass
demonstrations Friday to support the
country's armed forces.
Morsy's opponents are calling on people to
turn out to support the new government and
protest "against terrorism."
U.S. opts not to define Egypt ouster as a
coup; tensions rise ahead of planned protests
Morsy a victim of Egypt's revolution of the
mind
