The scary thing is that it seems to have only been a year or so since he left.
Carl Jarvis
On 6/18/19, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I remember when Sharif Abdel Kouddous returned to Egypt for good because he
thought that all of those demonstrations in 2011 that he covered For
Democracy Now, would actually accomplish a change for the better for the
country. I wonder if he regrets the move.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Tuesday, June 18, 2019 2:46 PM
To: blind-democracy <blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: Mostafa <mostafa.almahdy@xxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [blind-democracy] Former Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi died on
Monday after collapsing while in a glass cage inside a Cairo courtroom.
Former Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi, 67, died Monday after collapsing
while in a glass cage inside a Cairo courtroom. The Muslim Brotherhood
leader was elected in 2012 in Egypt’s first, and still only, democratic
election. He was overthrown a year later in a military coup led by Egyptian
army chief General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. Morsi’s death comes as el-Sisi
continues to jail tens of thousands of people in what the Associated Press
has described as the heaviest crackdown on dissent in Egypt’s modern
history. In his final comments, Morsi insisted he was still Egypt’s
legitimate president. Morsi spent the last six years of his life in jail,
including extended periods in solitary confinement. His family and global
human rights groups often denounced the poor conditions and Morsi’s
treatment in jail, arguing he had been deprived of much-needed healthcare.
Morsi was buried in Cairo earlier today. We speak with Sharif Abdel
Kouddous, Democracy Now! correspondent and a reporter with Mada Masr, an
independent media outlet in Cairo.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Former Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi died on Monday after
collapsing while in a glass cage inside a Cairo courtroom. Morsi was [ 67 ]
years old. He was buried earlier today in Cairo. The Muslim Brotherhood
leader was elected in 2012 in Egypt’s first, and still only, democratic
election, but he was deposed a year later in a military coup led by Egyptian
army chief General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. In his final comments, Morsi
insisted he was still Egypt’s legitimate president. Morsi’s historic
election came one year after mass protests led to the the end of Hosni
Mubarak’s 30-year rule in Egypt.
Morsi spent the last six years of his life in jail, including extended
periods in isolation.
AMY GOODMAN: The Muslim Brotherhood, which is now banned in Egypt, has
described Morsi’s death as, quote, “full-fledged murder.” Human Rights Watch
said, quote, “The government of Egypt today bears responsibility for his
death, given their failure to provide him with adequate medical care or
basic prisoner rights.” Morsi’s death comes as el-Sisi continues to jail
tens of thousands of people in what the Associated Press has described as
the heaviest crackdown on dissent in Egypt’s modern history.
We go now to Cairo, Egypt, where we’re joined by Sharif Abdel Kouddous,
Democracy Now! correspondent and a reporter with Mada Masr, an independent
media outlet in Cairo.
Sharif, this must have come as a shock to many yesterday, when you have the
former president of Egypt collapsing in court and dying. Talk about the
significance of Mohamed Morsi, also why he was in court.
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Well, Morsi is Egypt’s first democratically elected
president, really the first elected president in the Arab world. And,
really, that’s what he’ll be remembered for. But before 2002—sorry, before
2012, before he became the Muslim Brotherhood’s candidate for president,
many people had never heard of Mohamed Morsi. He was a bureaucrat in the
Muslim Brotherhood. He was by no means a leading figure or an influential
figure in the organization.
He rose really through the ranks as a party man and as a loyal bureaucrat.
He was elected to Parliament in 2000. And in 2011, after Mubarak’s ouster,
he was named president of the Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party.
When the Brotherhood made the controversial decision to field a presidential
candidate, it named Khairat el-Shater, its leading financier and strategist,
as its top choice. When el-Shater was disqualified from the race, then the
backup candidate, Mohamed Morsi, was suddenly thrust into the spotlight.
And during his brief one-year rule, he came under criticism from many
segments of Egyptian society, including those at the heart of the revolution
at the time. Morsi’s government and the Brotherhood pursued policies that
were meant to restrict the right to assemble, the right to protest, the
right to form NGOs. They spurned a draft law that guaranteed the right to
form independent unions. Morsi named Mohamed Ibrahim as his interior
minister in January of 2013, who then embarked on a very harsh crackdown on
any protesters against him.
But Morsi also had some achievements, none less than foreign policy, where
he helped broker a ceasefire in Gaza in 2012, after only a week of
fighting.
And that marked a very big difference that we saw under Sisi’s rule in 2014,
when Israel absolutely pummeled Gaza for a number of weeks.
In November, he made a kind of a fateful decision—November of 2012—a fateful
decision to issue a constitutional declaration that gave him temporary and
far-reaching powers that placed him beyond the reach of the courts, and this
sparked kind of the first mass protests against his rule. And these protests
eventually grew, culminating in this June 30th mobilization that was very
actively backed by the security establishment and the army. And then he was
removed from power by the military, led by Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, then a
general, whom Morsi himself had named as his prime minister the summer
before.
And Morsi has been in prison ever since, in very harsh prison conditions.
Many political detainees in Egypt suffer from brutal prison conditions, but
Morsi seems to have been especially singled out for mistreatment. He was
held in solitary confinement for the last six years. He was kept in his cell
for 23 hours a day with hardly any communication whatsoever. He was barred
from seeing his family or his lawyers. In the past six years, he only
met—had three family visits. And he regularly complained that he was
suffering, his health was suffering. He said, in June of 2017, that he
slipped into a diabetic coma for two days. He repeatedly asked in court to
be transferred to a private medical facility. His family, when they did see
him in one of the handful of times, said that he had lost significant
weight. And there was a report last year by—headed by a number of British
parliamentarians and senior lawyers, that found that his health was indeed
deteriorating. And they concluded that if he didn’t get treatment, it could
likely lead to his premature death.
And this is what we saw yesterday. And it was also a very dramatic moment,
if I can just give you some of the details. The official statement by the
public prosecutor is that Morsi was in the defendant’s cage. He demanded
from the judge to be able to address the court. The judge granted that. He
spoke for a few minutes. And during those few minutes, he said that he
demanded the right to speak to his lawyers. He likened himself to a blind
man who had no idea what was going on in his trial. And he ended—he actually
ended—his last words were, according to a lawyer who spoke to Mada Masr, he
said—he quoted from a poem. And he said, “My country, even if it fought me,
is dear to me.
My people, even if they resented me, are honorable.” Those were reportedly
his last words, according to one of his lawyers.
After that, the hearing was adjourned, and then Morsi collapsed inside the
defendant’s cage. The other defendants around him, some of whom were
physicians, tried to revive him. He was then taken to a hospital, where he
was pronounced dead on arrival. He was buried early today under heavy
security. The family attended the funeral prayers inside the mosque inside
Cairo’s notorious Tora Prison. Authorities did not allow Morsi to be buried
in his family’s cemetery in the delta. Instead, he was buried in a cemetery
in Cairo, where a number of other prominent Islamists are held. And security
officials turned reporters away from there and barred any photographers from
taking pictures at the funeral.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Sharif, I wanted to ask you in terms of how the resistance
has continued against the military regime in the years subsequent to the
deposing of Morsi, and if you could talk about that, as well. But also, the
broader question here, to my mind, is that the West has often pressed the
necessity for democratic reforms in the Arab and Muslim world, but we’ve
seen now, over several decades now, that when Islamists win power through
democratic elections, they’re crushed, whether it was in Algeria with the
Islamic Salvation Front in the early ’90s, when the military crushed what
was seen to be a victory, a popular democratic victory, by Islamic forces;
whether it was in Gaza, when—in the Palestinian territories in 2007, when
Hamas won in the election, and Israel, together with the Palestinian
Authority, then sought to crush the Hamas victory; or whether in Egypt in
2013 with the deposing by the military of Morsi. What is a young Arab Muslim
person in the Arab and Muslim world, when they see this happening, with the
support and complicity of the West—what alternative do they have but to
resort to violence against their oppressors?
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Well, you know, I was surprised today when the
response by the international community, there was very little comments
by—coming out of Washington, out of Berlin, out of Paris, out of London,
about Mohamed Morsi’s death. This was the democratically elected president
of, by far, the largest, most populous Arab country, who was deposed by the
military, who suffered deeply as a political detainee in prison, and yet
there was very little comment about his—you know, this dramatic death of him
after speaking in court.
And this speaks to—you know, there’s widespread acceptance of Sisi’s
government, of Abdel Fattah el-Sisi as the president of Egypt. He’s been
accepted by Europe, which lavishes millions of euros on Egypt in deals to
try and stem the flow of migrants to Europe. Egypt has become the biggest
purchaser of weapons from Germany in the world, is a massive purchaser of
weapons from France. They buy weapons from Italy, and technology, as well,
and from England.
So, this is kind of the consensus now. And Sisi says the line that, you
know, “At least we’re not Libya. At least we’re not Syria. At least we’re
not Yemen”—all these failed states around Egypt that have collapsed
following brutal civil wars. Many of them, the West intervened in. And this
is the line that seems to have been accepted.
So, as far as resistance goes in Egypt, there’s been—you know, we keep
talking about the very difficult and harsh crackdown on any and all
opposition voices in Egypt. And that continues. There’s very little in the
way of political parties. Civil society has been almost driven underground
and is operating in a very repressive environment. The media has been
controlled, not just through censorship, but also through acquisition by the
General Intelligence Services, which is now the largest media owner in
Egypt. And we really saw that today, when the coverage in the local press of
Morsi’s death not—only one newspaper had it on the front page. Every other
newspaper buried the news deep inside the paper. They almost had identical
coverage of 42 words, not even referring to Mohamed Morsi as the former
president. So that speaks to kind of the media landscape.
Having said that, there still are people willing to speak out all the time
despite these very harsh measures. We saw, when Sisi was—the Sisi government
was pushing through and Parliament was pushing through constitutional
amendments to extend Sisi’s rule in power until 2030, which was passed a
couple of months ago, hundreds of thousands of people signed an open
petition with their names online in opposition to the constitutional
amendments. We see these kinds of moments where people are willing to speak
out. So, in terms of organization and actual groundwork, it’s hard to tell
what is actually happening.
But despite what is a very difficult situation and an extremely harsh
clampdown, I am still surprised by the tenacity of people to be willing to
speak out and criticize the government.
AMY GOODMAN: You know, you mentioned response from the West. In April, Trump
welcomed el-Sisi, General Sisi, who overthrew, of course, Mohamed Morsi and
is now the president—he welcomed him to the White House for the second time,
saying, “We have never had a better relationship, Egypt and the United
States, than we do right now.” Also then, Trump pushed for the Muslim
Brotherhood to be designated a terrorist organization, but apparently the
State Department and the Pentagon said it didn’t meet the requirements, and
so President Trump couldn’t do what el-Sisi wanted, Sharif.
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Right. Sisi recently visited and reportedly asked for
that again. And we saw Trump again restarting this call to label the Muslim
Brotherhood a terrorist organization. Even within, you know, the U.S.’s
government itself, many State Department officials and Defense Department
officials think that will be a very divisive move to do, because the
Brotherhood operates in many countries as a political organization. But
there is this kind of branding of or an attempt to brand all Islamists as
terrorists, as unfit for political rule.
And this fits in the rubric of a larger world order that has completely been
accepted by the United States and the West. I mean, Trump does have a very
chummy relationship with Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, and they sing praises of each
other. But again, the actual policy does not mark a significant shift from
decades of U.S. policy, whether by Republican or Democratic administrations,
which has been to continue massive military aid to Egypt, to continue
diplomatic support and economic support to Egypt. In fact, Trump suspended
more aid than Obama did, following even the Rabaa massacre in August of
2013. But both of them—they both suspended some aid, and both restored it
eventually.
So, this has been a continuation of a long-standing policy, which is to work
with a “strongman,” quote-unquote, that we like. And Sisi seems to be very
happy with that, and that seems to be the international consensus,
especially by Europe and the United States, that Sisi is an acceptable
leader that they’re going to work with.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Sharif, if you could, briefly, detail for us what were
the actual charges against Morsi that he was facing trial for.
And his trial
extended for quite a period of time?
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Well, Morsi was facing multiple different trials. At
the time of his death, he was serving a 20-year sentence in one case that
had to do with clashes outside the presidential palace. He was serving a
life sentence in another case. He was serving a three-year sentence for
insulting the judiciary. And then there were two pending cases on which he
was going onto retrial for. One of them was a case involving spying for
Hamas, and that was the case that he was on yesterday. And another one that
he still had going on had to do with a supposed 2011 prison break, where he
was charged with that. So there’s been, you know, these massive kind of
trials happening, with these fantastical charges against him. One of them is
that he conspired with all these groups—the Iranian Revolutionary Guards and
Hezbollah and Hamas—to foment this Islamist takeover of Egypt. And they’ve
been marred by very serious due process violations.
We’ve seen other leading Muslim Brotherhood members been sentenced to death
multiple times. Many of them have received multiple life sentences. So, it’s
clear none of them will be getting out of prison as long as this government
is in power. And we’ve seen, yesterday, Morsi die. A leading former supreme
guide of the Muslim Brotherhood, Mahdi Akef, died last year, I believe. He
was also suffering. He was very old and needed medical attention, and he
died in prison. So, this is kind of the situation that we see.
And again, I have to stress that this is what thousands and thousands of
political prisoners in Egypt face: years in prison, after being convicted on
trials that fall very short of due process. Many of them have not even been
convicted at all and are held in what’s called remand detention, where they
can be held without conviction for up to three years under Egypt’s penal
code, and they’re often held more than that.
And finally, many people who complete their sentences then face something
called probation, where you have people like Shawkan, the photographer who
was arrested in August 2013, or Alaa Abd El-Fattah, a revolutionary icon,
who both have—after spending five years in prison, now have five years of
probation, where they are required to sleep and spend the night at a police
station every day, from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. They have to turn themselves in
every single day to the police station, where they sleep either on the floor
or in a cell or sometimes even outside the station, and they’re basically
detained for half the day. So, it’s these very draconian measures that the
Sisi government has continued to pursue and doesn’t seem to be letting up in
any way whatsoever.
AMY GOODMAN: Sharif, as we begin to wrap up, if you could talk about the
estimates of how many political prisoners there are in Egypt? But also, as
a, you know, key member of the independent media landscape in Egypt, can you
talk about the pressure on an independent press in Egypt?
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: It’s very difficult to find an actual figure of the
number of political prisoners. There have been some estimates by rights
groups that put it between 40,000 and 60,000 prisoners. We regularly see
sweeps of people, that continue to this day. Even people who haven’t spoken
out for a long time, their house will be raided at dawn, and they’ll be
taken away. And usually they’ll face charges like joining an outlawed
organization, which—
AMY GOODMAN: I’m sorry, we just have 20 seconds left on the satellite,
Sharif.
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: —usually means the Muslim Brotherhood. Or they’re—
AMY GOODMAN: We just have 20 seconds.
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Well, I would say the independent media landscape is
quite small but thriving. And Mada Masr is one of the best outlets for that,
but it operates in a very repressive and restrictive environment.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, we thank you so much for being with us, Sharif Abdel
Kouddous, Democracy Now! correspondent, a reporter with Mada Masr, an
independent media outlet, speaking to us from Cairo, Egypt, upon the death
of the former democratically elected President Mohamed Morsi. He died in a
cage in court, where he was being tried.
