Egypt: Morsi Trial Halted Due To Chanting

Co-ordinated Chaos At Morsi Trial

Updated: 5:09pm UK, Monday 04 November 2013

Seven men stood behind him as he stared out through bars into the courtroom.

The men, all Islamists, were dressed in white overalls and had their backs to the judge, their arms raised, four fingers on each hand raised.

Egypt's first democratically elected president, Mohamed Morsi, who refused the garb of a prisoner, told the court: "I am the legitimate president of the country."

But no one outside the trial could hear him – state television showed the video with no sound.

But the al Ahram news website quoted him as telling the judge: "I refuse to accept the Egyptian judiciary be a cover for the criminal military coup [that deposed him on July 3]."

The four fingers from his co-accused, all facing a possible death penalty for allegedly inciting murder during riots and an attack on the Muslim Brother headquarters in which eight people were killed, sent a message every Cairo commuter recognised – those four fingers meant take me to "Raba'a Square".

That was the scene of Egypt's largest political massacre in decades when hundreds, perhaps close to 1,000, Morsi supporters were shot dead and many more wounded by government forces during the clearance of a sit in outside the iconic mosque in Nasr City, Cairo, on August 14.

"I am present here by force and I demand that the head of this court not participate in the coup but restore by authority as president," Mr Morsi is reported to have said.

His outburst was part of a co-ordinated use of chaos by him and his co-defendants.

They chanted slogans against the court and the regime that had put them in the dock, they exchanged insults with their opponents and by lunchtime the session had been postponed for three months.

A lawyer for the defence, Ali Suleiman, said: "They [the lawyers] said that 'the court does not have the jurisdiction', and they said they 'want to be able to visit the accused because we do not know the whereabouts of Morsi', and so on until the case was postponed.

"There was some pushing and shoving between the lawyers of both sides and some journalists, but then it quieted down."

Outside the Police Academy, where another former president Hosni Mubarak, who is also accused of using political violence, has been on trial this year, Mr Morsi's supporters continued to cry foul.

Dr Sayed Awad, another jurist said: "Dr Mohamed Morsi did not appoint anyone to defend him because he does not recognise neither the trial nor the procedures and the investigation …

"The trial should be public and transparent so that the whole society and the world can be reassured. I need to understand why this trial is not public.

"If you are speaking about the law, I can tell you that by law and constitution, Mohammed Morsi is still the legitimate president of Egypt because he was elected by the people through the ballot boxes.

"All world governments agree that the president can only be changed through the ballot boxes."

That may be true in legal terms.

But the reality is that the "deep state" – Egypt's security apparatus, the military and its vast commercial empire, is now firmly back in charge of the Arab world's most populous country.

The coup which deposed Mr Morsi in July has never been described as such by Egypt's allies.

The United States imposed a temporary freeze on part of a $1.5bn annual military aid package which involved delays on the delivery of fighters, attack helicopters and other equipment – but has not labelled the ousting a "coup".

Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates, have swung behind the return of the "Deep State" with a total aid package worth $15bn in cash loans, grants and oil subsidies.

The authoritarian Gulf states all fear the organising power of the Brotherhood more than liberal democratic movements calling for the emancipation of women and the like.

The US fears chaos, the Muslim Brotherhood, Islamisation in general.

A secular military-dominated regime that keeps a lid on a fractious country may be the least bad option, from Washington's perspective.

Washington may be wrong.

The trial of Mr Morsi and the other seven as well as another eight men in absentia, should be seen as the latest and most spectacular attempt by the new government, officially led by president Adly Mansour, to re-criminalise the Muslim Brotherhood which spent most of the second half of the last century underground until the 2011 revolution which deposed Mubarak.

The party's leadership has been rounded up, its media shut down, and its supporters attacked.

But two genies have emerged from this bottle of political poison.

Firstly, Egypt has been gripped by a democratic spirit which could turn dangerous if it is not satisfied by the elections promised for next year.

The other is that Islamic groups, who have never fully comprehended the ups and downs of the democratic process anyway, may increasingly resort to violence.

The Sinai is already in the grip of an Islamic and criminal insurgency.

Police are regularly attacked in hit and run killings along the Suez, churches and worshippers face a daily danger of deadly attack.

It is hard to see how the show trial of an Islamic former president who was the first man ever to be democratically elected head of state will contribute to reducing tensions.

They are a look back to the dictatorships of the last century – not to the future of this one.

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