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Muslim Brotherhood conspired against state: Egypt's judiciary

Xinhua, January 25, 2016 Adjust font size:

Egypt's judicial committee said Sunday that leading figures from the Muslim Brotherhood group had schemed against state affairs during former Islamist President Mohamed Morsi's one-year rule.

"The Brotherhood's guidance office, the presidency, the government and the group's Freedom and Justice Party ran the state's affairs at that time," said Ezzat Khamis, chief of the judicial committee that is tasked with appraising the Muslim Brotherhood's funds and assets.

The four entities were four faces of the same coin with no separation of powers between the presidency, the party, the guidance office nor the government, Khamis added.

The accusations come a day before the fifth anniversary of the 2011 protests which ended former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's 30-year rule.

"The documents also indicate that confidential papers related to national security were leaked from the presidency," Khamis added.

The committee revealed a number of proposals discovered at the Freedom and Justice Party premises, including one concerning the Brotherhood's hostile stance towards the Supreme Constitutional Court and the judiciary in general.

The groups drafted several laws to amend a number of articles in the judicial authority, including a proposal to appoint the prosecutor general via a presidential decree and to reduce judges' retirement age to 60, according to Khamis

He also referred to a document which included a Brotherhood plan to control the state's judicial system, and cancel the Supreme Constitutional Court and relocate its tasks to the Court of Cassation.

Morsi, the Brotherhood's group member who became Egypt's first elected president, was deposed in 2013 by the army as a response to mass protests against his rule. The Muslim Brotherhood was later designated a terrorist organization in 2013 by Egyptian authorities.

A number of its members and leaders, including the group's supreme guide, Mohammed Badie, were sentenced to death, but the sentences have not yet been carried out and may still be appealed.

Brotherhood leaders, including Morsi, are imprisoned awaiting to be tried for charges related to inciting violence, conspiring with foreign powers to undermine Egypt, and the killing of protestors. Some charges carry the death penalty. Endit