CAIRO - Egypt’s military moved swiftly Thursday against senior figures of the Muslim Brotherhood, targeting the backbone of support for ousted President Mohammed Morsi. In the most dramatic step, authorities arrested the group’s revered leader at a seaside villa and flew him by helicopter to detention in the capital.
With a top judge newly sworn in as interim president to replace Morsi, the crackdown poses an immediate test to the new army-backed leadership’s promises to guide Egypt to democracy: the question of how to include the 83-year-old fundamentalist group.
That question has long been at the heart of democracy efforts in Egypt. Hosni Mubarak and previous authoritarian regimes banned the group, raising cries even from pro-reform Brotherhood critics that it must be allowed to participate if Egypt was to be free. After Mubarak’s fall, the newly legalized group vaulted to power in elections, with its veteran member Morsi becoming the country’s first freely elected president.
Now the group is reeling under a backlash from a public that says the Brotherhood and its Islamist allies abused their electoral mandate. The military forced Morsi out Wednesday after millions of Egyptians nationwide turned out in four days of protests demanding he be removed.
Furious over what it calls a military coup against democracy, the Brotherhood vowed Thursday it will not work with the new leadership. It and harder-line Islamist allies called for a wave of protests today, dubbing it the “Friday of Rage,” vowing to escalate if the military does not back down.
There are widespread fears of Islamist violence in retaliation for Morsi’s ouster, and already some former militant extremists have vowed to fight. Multiple Brotherhood officials on Thursday firmly urged their followers to keep their protests peaceful. Thousands of Morsi supporters remained massed in front of a Cairo mosque where they have camped for days, with a line of military armored vehicles across the road nearby keeping watch.
“We declare our complete rejection of the military coup staged against the elected president and the will of the nation,” the Brotherhood said in a statement, read by the group’s senior cleric Abdel-Rahman el-Barr to the crowd outside the Rabia al-Adawiya Mosque in Cairo.
“We refuse to participate in any activities with the usurping authorities,” the statement said, urging Morsi supporters to remain peaceful. The Rabia al-Adawiya protesters planned to march on the Ministry of Defense today.
Egyptian authorities shut down four Islamist TV stations, banned the Muslim Brotherhood’s newspaper and raided the office of Al-Jazeera’s Egypt affiliate in a crackdown on media considered sympathetic to Morsi, bringing an outcry Thursday from rights groups.
Rights groups said the moves appeared to be an attempt to intimidate pro-Morsi media and shut off their viewpoints.
Among the shuttered stations was the Misr25 channel, run by the Brotherhood. It went off the air Wednesday night just as it was airing pro-Morsi protesters chanting “Down with military rule” after Egypt’s military chief announced that Morsi had been removed.
The Brotherhood denounced the crackdown and said the military is returning Egypt to the practices of “the dark, repressive, dictatorial and corrupt ages.”
The London-based Amnesty International called the shutdowns a “blow to freedom of expression.”
A military statement late Thursday appeared to signal a wider wave of arrests was not in the offing. Spokesman Col. Ahmed Mohammed Ali said in a Facebook posting that that the army and security forces will not take “any exceptional or arbitrary measures” against any political group.
The military has a “strong will to ensure national reconciliation, constructive justice and tolerance,” he wrote. He spoke against “gloating” and vengeance, saying only peaceful protests will be tolerated and urging Egyptians not to attack Brotherhood offices to avert an “endless cycle of revenge.”
The army’s removal of Morsi sparked celebrations Wednesday night among the crowds of protesters around the country, with fireworks, dancing, and blaring car horns lasting close to dawn.
On Thursday, the extent of the Brotherhood reversal was clear. Adly Mansour, the head of the Supreme Constitutional Court, with which Morsi had repeated confrontations, was sworn in as interim president.
In his inaugural speech, aired nationwide, he said the large-scale anti-Morsi protests that began Sunday had “corrected the path of the glorious revolution of Jan. 25,” referring to the 2011 uprising that toppled Mubarak. To cheers from his audience, he also praised the army, police, media and judiciary for standing against the Brotherhood - all institutions that Islamists saw as full of Mubarak loyalists trying to thwart their rule.
Moreover, the constitution, which Islamists drafted and Morsi praised as the greatest in the world, has been suspended. Also, Abdel-Meguid Mahmoud, the Mubarak-era top prosecutor whom Morsi removed to much controversy, was reinstated to his post and immediately announced investigations against Brotherhood officials.
Many of the Brotherhood’s opponents want members prosecuted for what they say were crimes committed during Morsi’s rule, just as Mubarak was prosecuted for protester deaths during the uprising against him. Over the past year, dozens were killed in clashes with Brotherhood supporters and with security forces.
The National Salvation Front, the top opposition political group during Morsi’s presidency and a key member of the coalition that worked with the military in his removal, criticized the moves. “We totally reject excluding any party, particularly political Islamic groups.”
NEW LEADERSHIP
The Front has proposed one of its top leaders, Mohammed ElBaradei, to become prime minister of the interim Cabinet, a post that will hold strong powers since Mansour’s presidency post is considered symbolic. ElBaradei, a Nobel Peace laureate who once headed the U.N. nuclear watchdog, is considered the country’s top advocate for change.
ElBaradei said Thursday that he had worked hard to convince Western powers of what he called the necessity of forcibly ousting Morsi, contending that Morsi had bungled the country’s transition to an inclusive democracy.
In an interview, ElBaradei also defended the widening arrests of Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood allies and the shutdown of Islamist television networks after the removal of Morsi.
“The security people obviously are worried - there was an earthquake and we have to make sure that the tremors are predicted and controlled,” he said.
“Reconciliation is the name of the game, including the Muslim Brotherhood. We need to be inclusive,” said Munir Fakhry Abdel-Nour, a leading member of the group. “The detentions are a mistake.”
He said the arrests appeared to be prompted by security officials’ fears over possible calls for violence by Brotherhood leaders. There may be complaints against certain individuals in the Brotherhood “but they don’t justify the detention,” he said, predicting they will be released in the coming days.
Abdel-Nour said the Front intends to ensure the military has no role in politics. He added that the Front is hoping for the backing of ultraconservative Salafis for ElBaradei’s bid for prime minister. Some Salafi factions have sided with the new leadership. He noted that the Islamist-backed constitution was not outright cancelled in a gesture to Salafis.
Morsi has been under detention in an unknown location since Wednesday night, and at least a dozen of his top presidential aides and advisers have been under what is described as “house arrest,” though their locations are also unknown.
Besides the Brotherhood’s top leader, General Guide Mohammed Badie, security officials also have arrested his predecessor, Mahdi Akef, and one of his two deputies, Rashad Bayoumi, as well as Saad el-Katatni, head of the Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party, and ultraconservative Salafi figure Hazem Abu Ismail, who has a considerable street following.
Authorities also have issued a wanted list for more than 200 Brotherhood members and leaders of other Islamist groups. Among them is Khairat el-Shater, another deputy of the general guide who is widely considered the most powerful figure in the Brotherhood.
The arrest of Badie was a dramatic step, since even Mubarak and his predecessors had been reluctant to move against the group’s top leader. The ranks of Brotherhood members across the country swear a strict oath of unquestioning allegiance to the general guide, vowing to “hear and obey.” It has been decades since any Brotherhood general guide was put in a prison.
Badie and el-Shater were widely believed by the opposition to be the real power in Egypt during Morsi’s tenure. Badie was arrested late Wednesday from a villa where he had been staying in the Mediterranean coastal city of Marsa Matrouh and flown by helicopter to Cairo, security officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the press.
Mahmoud, the top prosecutor, said he was opening investigations into the killings of protesters during Morsi’s rule. He ordered el-Katatni and Bayoumi questioned on allegations of instigating violence and killings, and put travel bans on 36 others, a sign they, too, could face prosecution. He also took steps toward releasing a prominent activist detained for insulting Morsi.
In the first step toward setting up a post-Morsi leadership, Mansour took the oath as interim president before his fellow judges at the constitutional court.
The 67-year-old jurist, a Mubarak appointee like nearly every judge in the judiciary, had been the deputy head of the court for more than 20 years. He was elevated to the chief-justice position only three days ago, when his predecessor reached the mandatory retirement age. He was among the judges who ruled against a political isolation law in 2012 that would have barred many Mubarak-era officials from politics - and as a result, Mubarak’s last prime minister Ahmed Shafiq was able to run against Morsi.
After the swearing-in ceremony aired live on state TV, Mansour delivered an address praising the widespread street demonstrations that led to Morsi’s ouster. He hailed the youths behind the protests that began Sunday and brought out millions around the country.
Dressed in a dark blue suit and a sky blue tie, Mansour said the rallies “brought together everyone without discrimination or division” and were an “expression of the nation’s conscience and an embodiment of its hopes and ambitions.”
But there was no sign of outreach to the Brotherhood in his address. He suggested Morsi’s election had been tainted, saying, “I look forward to parliamentary and presidential elections held with the genuine and authentic will of the people.”
The revolution, he said, must continue so “we stop producing tyrants.”
OPINIONS ABROAD
President Barack Obama and his national security team tread delicately Thursday in the aftermath of the removal of Morsi, urging the restive nation to quickly return authority to a democratically elected civilian government and avoid violence. The administration still declined to take sides in the volatile developments as Egypt’s military installed an interim government leader.
Ahead of Washington’s Fourth of July fireworks, Obama met with his national security team in the White House situation room for briefings on their calls to Egyptian leaders and other partners in the region, National Security Council spokesman Bernadette Meehan said in a statement.
The carefully worded messages from the U.S. officials conveyed “the importance of a quick and responsible return of full authority to a democratically elected civilian government as soon as possible,” Meehan said.
The series of calls by Secretary of State John Kerry, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel and national security adviser Susan Rice went to officials from Egypt, Israel, Qatar, Turkey and Norway.
The U.S. officials also urged a transparent political process in Egypt and the avoidance of “any arbitrary arrests of President Morsi and his supporters,” Meehan said.
Meanwhile, France’s president hailed Tunisia’s democratic transition as an example for the whole Arab world Thursday and promised political and economic support on his first official visit to the country.
Francois Hollande’s two day visit is an effort to restart relations with Tunisia that were strained from his predecessor’s close ties to Zine Abidine Ben Ali, the dictator Tunisians deposed in January 2011. The Tunisian revolution sparked the Arab Spring pro-democracy uprisings across the region, including Egypt.
Hollande contrasted Tunisia’s democratic progress with the military takeover in Egypt, which he called a failure in that country’s democratic transition.
“What going on here in Tunisia is a transition that is controlled and organized,” he said during a news conference with Tunisian President Moncef Marzouki. “What is clear is there is also an obligation for you to succeed because you are an example, you give many people in the Arab world hope.”
The United Arab Emirates, too, expressed “satisfaction” at Morsi’s downfall.
For Western nations, the response to some to the rapid-fire events in Cairo seemed to touch a vein of realpolitik, pitting concern about military takeovers in principle against a little-disguised unease at the ascendancy of political Islam under Morsi.
As the British foreign secretary, William Hague, put it in London: “We will always be clear that we don’t support military intervention, but we will work with people in authority in Egypt. That is the practical reality of foreign policy.”
In Turkey, which has a long history of military intervention in political life and whose government is Islamist-led, Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said on Thursday that the generals’ action in Cairo was a “military coup”and “unacceptable.”
President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority, by contrast, sent official congratulations to Adli Mansour, Egypt’s interim president, on what he called “this transitional phase of its history,” according to Wafa, the official Palestinian news agency.
“We ask God to help you to take this difficult responsibility at this critical period, to achieve the hopes of the Egyptian people in freedom, dignity and stability,” said Abbas, who praised the role of Egypt’s army in preserving Egyptian security.
Information for this article was contributed by Lee Keath, Sarah El Deeb, Bouazza Ben Bouazza, Sylvie Corbet, Josh Lederman and Laurie Kellman of The Associated Press; and by David Kirkpatrick and Alan Cowell of The New York Times.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 07/05/2013