Egypt’s first democratically elected president, Mohamed Morsi, was buried early yesterday under heavy security, a day after his dramatic collapse and death inside a Cairo courtroom, a member of his defense team said.
Morsi’s family attended funeral prayers in the mosque of Cairo’s Tora prison, followed by the burial at a cemetery in the city’s eastern district of Nasr City, attorney Abdul-Moneim Abdel-Maqsoud said.
Morsi’s son, Ahmed, said security agencies refused to allow Morsi to be buried at the family’s cemetery in his hometown in Sharqia Province, and instead had him interred at a Cairo cemetery dedicated to prominent Islamists.
Photo: AFP
Security agents turned reporters away from the cemetery, banning them from taking photographs of the funeral. Reporters were also barred from traveling to Morsi’s hometown.
Morsi, 67, hailed from Egypt’s largest Islamist group, the now outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, and was elected president in 2012 in the country’s first free elections following the ouster the year before of then-president Hosni Mubarak.
The military toppled Morsi in 2013 after massive protests and crushed the Brotherhood in a major crackdown, arresting Morsi and many others of the group’s leaders.
During his years in prison, Morsi, who was known to have diabetes, was often held in solitary confinement and was largely barred from receiving visitors. His family was only allowed to visit three times.
While in detention, Morsi continued to appear in court on a range of charges.
In early court sessions he gave angry speeches until judges ordered him kept in a glass cage where they could turn off his audio.
The Brotherhood on Monday accused the government of “assassinating” him through years of poor prison conditions.
The group demanded an international investigation into Morsi’s death and called on Egyptians to protest outside Egyptian embassies across the world.
Late on Monday, Egypt’s chief prosecutor said Morsi’s body would be examined to determine the cause of his death.
State television, citing an unnamed medical source, said he died after suffering a heart attack.
Morsi collapsed just after he had addressed the court, speaking from inside the glass cage and warning that he had “many secrets” he could reveal, a judicial official said.
In his final comments, he continued to insist he was Egypt’s legitimate president, demanding a special tribunal, one of his defense lawyers, Kamel Madour told reporters.
State TV said Morsi died before he could be taken to hospital.
It was a dramatic end for a figure central in the twists and turns taken by Egypt since its “revolution” — from the pro-democracy uprising that in 2011 ousted Mubarak, through controversial Islamist rule and now back to a tight grip under the domination of military men.
The Brotherhood won the elections held after Mubarak’s fall, considered the first free votes the country had seen.
First, they gained a majority in parliament, then Morsi squeaked to victory in presidential elections held in 2012, becoming the first civilian to hold the office.
Morsi was sentenced to 20 years in prison on charges of ordering Brotherhood members to break up a protest against him, resulting in deaths.
Multiple cases are still pending. Monday’s session was part of a retrial on charges of espionage with the Palestinian Hamas group.
Magdalena Mughrabi, deputy director for the Middle East at Amnesty International, said Morsi’s death “raises serious questions about his treatment in custody.”
She called on Egyptian authorities to order “an impartial, thorough and transparent investigation into the circumstances of his death, as well as his detention conditions and his ability to access medical care.”
AFGHAN CHILD: A court battle is ongoing over if the toddler can stay with Joshua Mast and his wife, who wanted ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ for her Major Joshua Mast, a US Marine whose adoption of an Afghan war orphan has spurred a years-long legal battle, is to remain on active duty after a three-member panel of Marines on Tuesday found that while he acted in a way unbecoming of an officer to bring home the baby girl, it did not warrant his separation from the military. Lawyers for the Marine Corps argued that Mast abused his position, disregarded orders of his superiors, mishandled classified information and improperly used a government computer in his fight over the child who was found orphaned on the battlefield in rural Afghanistan
EYEING THE US ELECTION: Analysts say that Pyongyang would likely leverage its enlarged nuclear arsenal for concessions after a new US administration is inaugurated North Korean leader Kim Jong-un warned again that he could use nuclear weapons in potential conflicts with South Korea and the US, as he accused them of provoking North Korea and raising animosities on the Korean Peninsula, state media reported yesterday. Kim has issued threats to use nuclear weapons pre-emptively numerous times, but his latest warning came as experts said that North Korea could ramp up hostilities ahead of next month’s US presidential election. In a Monday speech at a university named after him, the Kim Jong-un National Defense University, he said that North Korea “will without hesitation use all its attack
STOPOVERS: As organized crime groups in Asia and the Americas move drugs via places such as Tonga, methamphetamine use has reached levels called ‘epidemic’ A surge of drugs is engulfing the South Pacific as cartels and triads use far-flung island nations to channel narcotics across the globe, top police and UN officials told reporters. Pacific island nations such as Fiji and Tonga sit at the crossroads of largely unpatrolled ocean trafficking routes used to shift cocaine from Latin America, and methamphetamine and opioids from Asia. This illicit cargo is increasingly spilling over into local hands, feeding drug addiction in communities where serious crime had been rare. “We’re a victim of our geographical location. An ideal transit point for vessels crossing the Pacific,” Tonga Police Commissioner Shane McLennan
RUSSIAN INPUT: Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov called Washington’s actions in Asia ‘destructive,’ accusing it of being the reason for the ‘militarization’ of Japan The US is concerned about China’s “increasingly dangerous and unlawful” activities in the disputed South China Sea, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told ASEAN leaders yesterday during an annual summit, and pledged that Washington would continue to uphold freedom of navigation in the region. The 10-member ASEAN meeting with Blinken followed a series of confrontations at sea between China and ASEAN members Philippines and Vietnam. “We are very concerned about China’s increasingly dangerous and unlawful activities in the South China Sea which have injured people, harm vessels from ASEAN nations and contradict commitments to peaceful resolutions of disputes,” said Blinken, who
RSS