Supporters of ousted president Mohamed Morsi will demonstrate from Friday until Monday in “different areas around Egypt” as per a statement issued by the National Coalition to Support Legitimacy (NCSL) on Thursday.
Under the name of “Trial of Popular Will”, the protests, according to the coalition, will continue until Monday, the set trial date for the former president. 14 other Muslim Brotherhood members will also be tried on the same day for their role in the Presidential Palace clashes in December 2012.
The coalition announced that “a mass rally” will be held outside the Police Officers’ Academy in Torah, where Morsi will be tried. The alliance dubbed 4 November as “President’s Steadfastness Day.”
“The pro-democracy coalition also calls the whole free world to demonstrate on this day in front of Egypt’s embassies and consulates… we will make this day an international day of protest,” the statement added.
The coalition described the “violations” committed against “Egypt’s first elected president” as “absurd”, saying Morsi was a hostage for being kept in an undisclosed location and claimed that “he is deprived of the most basic of human rights.”
State-owned Al Ahram meanwhile reported from a security source that 12,000 security force members would be present at trial for security, noting that the trial would take place at the “Institute for Police Trustees, near Torah prison.”
The expected protests come after Coup Victims, a team of lawyers opposed to Morsi’s ouster, announced that the former president would not recognise the authority of the court, citing its “illegality.”
Morsi’s bureau manager Ahmed Abdel Atty, his assistant Ayman Abdel Raouf, former Deputy Chief of Staff Asaad El Sheikha, Deputy Chairman of the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) Essam El-Erian, senior FJP member Mohamed Al-Beltagy, conservative preacher Wagdi Ghoneim, and activists Abdel Rahman Ezz, Ahmed Al-Mogheer and Alaa Hamza are the other individuals referred to court on the same day.
“What the putschists wanted the most from this trial was to break the people’s will, their determination to continue the Revolution… they are taking revenge on January 25 revolutionaries, in order to reincarnate the Mubarak regime and reinstate military rule,” the statement read. “They have lost their senses, baffled at the resolute steadfastness and resilience of President Morsi. They further lost their minds, stunned by the sheer persistence of anti-coup protesters despite all the brutal killings and vicious arrests.”
