(AFP FILE PHOTO/KHALED DESOUKI)
Prosecutor General Hisham Barakat ordered Wednesday the referral of former president Mohamed Morsi along with several prominent members of the Muslim Brotherhood to criminal court for charges of espionage.
The announcement came in a statement by the prosecutor general under the title “The Biggest Case of Espionage in the History of Egypt.”
The Muslim Brotherhood leaders included: Supreme Guide of the Muslim Brotherhood Mohamed Badie; his deputies Khairat Al-Shater and Mahmoud Ezzat; as well as members of the guidance office, including former speaker of parliament Mohamed Saad Al-Katatny, Mohamed Al-Beltagy, Essam Al-Erian, Saad Al-Hossainy and others.
The statement added that the prosecutor general’s investigations had shown the international organisation of the Muslim Brotherhood to be “the reason behind violence inside Egypt to create a state of ultimate chaos.”
The statement listed the Brotherhood’s alleged accomplices in “a plot” organised with the aid of several foreign organisations such as: the Islamic resistance movement of Hamas, which it called “the military arm of the Muslim Brotherhood international organisation”; Hezbollah in Lebanon which it said “has strong ties with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard”; amongst other extremist jihadist groups inside and outside the country.
The prosecutor general added that the investigations uncovered that some members of the Brotherhood received military and media training in Gaza, which they had reached via secret tunnels.
The objective of this military training, he said, was to return to Sinai to join other jihadists to “implement their training”. The alleged media training, meanwhile, was aimed at manipulating public opinion “to serve the agenda of the international organisation [of the Brotherhood], which has opened channels with the west through Qatar and Turkey,” the statement added.
Mohamed Damati, Morsi’s defence lawyer, said his defence team “has no idea” about the investigations conducted into Morsi. “The prosecutor general assigned a lawyer whom we know nothing about to legalise the investigation,” Damati said. “But [former president] Morsi” ignored and refused to cooperate with the investigators, since “the investigations were conducted at the time Morsi was detained in an undisclosed location.”
Since his ouster on 3 July, the location of Morsi’s detention was undisclosed until the date of his trial on 4 November.
“The entire judiciary scene is being run by putchists,” Damati commented on the prosecutor general’s statement, adding that once the court sets a date for the trial, his defence team would undertake the required legal procedures.
