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Egypt rejects British asylum offer to Brotherhood members

Xinhua, August 10, 2016 Adjust font size:

The Egyptian Foreign Ministry voiced rejection of a recent report by the British Home Office offering political asylum to top members and supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) group that is currently outlawed in the Arab country, official MENA news agency reported Tuesday.

"What has been issued by the British Home Office regarding the Brotherhood includes signs that we do not consider positive, nor do we consider as having a positive effect on the Egyptian-Britain relations," MENA quoted Egypt's Foreign Minsiter Sameh Shoukry as saying.

The British Home Office has recently issued a 22-page document entitled "Country Information and Guidance - Egypt: Muslim Brotherhood," specifically addressing political asylum in Britain for the Egyptian MB members who are at risk of "persecution."

The report said that the MB has been designated as a terrorist organization in Egypt and its members may be persecuted, referring to members and loyalists who were detained, injured or killed following the 2013 military overthrow of Egypt's former MB-oriented president Mohamed Morsi.

The Egyptian foreign minister said the British report relied on "baseless assumptions," rejecting the report's indication that the Egyptian judiciary does not provide fair trials for MB members and supporters.

The British Home Office document offers asylum for high-profile MB members, supporters or those perceived to support them, such as journalists, who may face similar risk of persecution. "In such cases, a grant of asylum will be appropriate."

The report, however, excludes those MB members or followers who incited anti-government violence or urged for fighting against the current regime.

Egypt has been facing Western pressures since Morsi's ouster in July 2013 and the later security crackdown on his supporters, which left about 1,000 of them killed and thousands more arrested and facing mass trials.

Since then, growing anti-government terror attacks left hundreds of police and military men killed, with most of them claimed by a Sinai-based militant group loyal to the regional Islamic State (IS) group.

The administration of Egypt's military-oriented President Abdel-Fatah al-Sisi, who led Morsi's removal, managed to mend relations with most Western states, eventually leading the United States to resume its annual 1.3-billion-dollar military aid to Egypt and France to sell arms worth billions of dollars to the country. Endit