In Egypt, Deplorable Death Sentences
By THE EDITORIAL BOARDMAY 18, 2015
Sometime in the near future, Mohamed Morsi, Egypt’s first democratically elected president, could be hanged to death by the state. That would be a profound injustice, considering the sham trial that landed him on death row.
But there is a more compelling reason to spare him. Egypt’s relentless and sweeping crackdown on Islamists, under the baseless contention that they are inherently dangerous, is becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. Executing Mr. Morsi, who was sentenced on Saturday, would turn an underwhelming former statesman into a martyr. It also would send an unfortunate and needless signal to Egyptians who have historically been averse to militancy that taking up arms might be the only way to be heard.
A surge in terrorist attacks during the past two years, including recent ones targeting judges, suggests that armed violence is increasingly becoming an acceptable response. Shortly after Mr. Morsi’s sentence was imposed on Saturday, three judges were shot to death in Sinai. Earlier this month, a judge survived a bombing outside his house in a Cairo suburb.
Mr. Morsi was sentenced to death, along with more than 100 co-defendants, after being convicted of playing a role in a huge jailbreak during the nation’s popular uprising in January 2011. At the time, he was a midlevel leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist movement that renounced violence in the 1970s and became the dominant political force after the revolt. He was among the scores of Muslim Brotherhood members who broke free from jail after being unfairly detained in the early days of the revolution.
During the fleeting period of democracy that followed the uprising, leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood proved to be prodigiously successful at campaigning but inept at governing. The group’s Freedom and Justice Party won the most seats in Parliament, which was later dissolved by the judiciary. After a hard-fought political campaign, Mr. Morsi became the country’s first democratically elected leader. Just over a year after he took office, military chiefs took advantage of the growing discontent with Mr. Morsi’s government to remove him from power in a coup.
Since then, the country’s leaders have waged a relentless campaign against Islamists, who have been maligned by the state-run press, detained indiscriminately and prosecuted in mass trials that lack due process. The crackdown has driven many Egyptians into exile, depriving the country of moderate voices.
“These sentences are yet another manifestation of the deeply troubling way the Egyptian judiciary has been used as a tool to settle political disagreements by the harshest and most repressive means possible,” Emad Shahin, a scholar and visiting professor at Georgetown University, said in a statement. “Due process, regard for evidence, and minimum standard of justice have been tossed aside in favor of draconian injustice.” Mr. Shahin was sentenced to death in absentia as part of the case against Mr. Morsi.
Also sentenced to death was Sondos Asem, a young woman who worked as a news media coordinator for the ousted president and is now pursuing a public policy degree at the Blavatnik School of Government at Oxford University in Britain.
Egypt’s grand mufti, the top religious authority for Sunni Muslims, has to approve the death sentences before they can be carried out. Defense lawyers may appeal them, although it is unclear whether they would get a fair shot in the country’s increasingly politicized court system.
In response to the sentences, the Muslim Brotherhood called on followers to “escalate revolutionary defiance activities every day until together we defeat the junta and topple the illegitimate military coup regime.”
Some of the Muslim Brotherhood’s followers are likely to interpret that as an invitation to continue to demonstrate peacefully, although even that, in the new Egypt, has been outlawed. Others reading between the lines may see it as a call to arms.
The United States, which provides the Egyptian government with $1.3 billion in military aid each year, responded over the weekend in a predictably muted fashion, saying in a statement that it was “deeply concerned” by the sentences. The American government should be more concerned by the long-term ramifications of the crackdown on Islamists that it has thus far chosen to abet.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/19/opinion/in-egypt-deplorable-death-sentences.html?_r=0
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MAY 26, 2015
Ambassador of Egypt’s response to the New York Times’ editorial
The following is a letter to the editor submitted by the Embassy to the New York Times regarding their editorial board’s recent commentary.
To the Editor,
The New York Times May 19th editorial “In Egypt, Deplorable death Sentences” starts with yet another outright fabrication.
It claims that an Egyptian court has sentenced Mohamed Morsi and others to death. Had the editorial board chosen to apply basic standards of journalism, they would have disclosed that the judge actually set a date in early June to pronounce his sentence. Until that time, any reports as to what that sentence may be amount to nothing more than conjecture. Faithful to what has become its established policy, the Times again goes out of its way to absolve the Moslem Brotherhood of their crimes. At a time when the Brotherhood’s official media outlets are openly instigating their followers to violence and terrorism, this newspaper makes the claim that the Moslem Brotherhood “renounced violence in the 1970s” without providing a shred of evidence to that effect, and brushing aside the ample evidence to the opposite that has surfaced in recent years. In January of this year, the Moslim Brotherhood’s official website posted a statement in Arabic calling for a “long, uncompromising Jihad” against Egypt, while the Brotherhood-controlled TV called for the assassination of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El Sisi. Soon thereafter, terrorist attacks in North Sinai killed more than 30 and injured nearly 100. The Times editorial makes a clumsy attempt at reinterpreting these calls as an “invitation to continue to demonstrate peacefully”. I wonder how they would defend similar Moslem Brotherhood calls to target Westerners.
In an attempt to sidestep the serious events at the heart of Morsi’s trial, the editorial board sums the case this way: “He was among scores of Moslem Brotherhood members who broke free from jail after being unfairly detained in the early days of the revolution”. There is not as much as a hint to the coordinated assaults with heavy weaponry that caused those jailbreaks. The Times is even mute on the victims, the guards and inmates who were brutally murdered for Morsi and his colleagues to walk free.
Frankly, I never expected this editorial board to mention that members of Hamas and Hezbollah were among the prisoners freed by the assailants. It simple would have been too close to the truth, exposing the network of militant organizations in our region and elsewhere, at the heart of which is, of course, the Moslem Brotherhood, without whose help these militants would have been unable to quickly resurface in Gaza and Beirut, respectively.
Even more disturbing than its misrepresentations of Egypt’s judiciary, or its unquestioning adoption of Moslem Brotherhood’s propaganda, is the Times’ attempt to explain away the actions of terrorists. Rather than condemn unequivocally the cold-blooded assassination of three Egyptian judges by terrorists, or at least show sympathy for their families’ suffering, the Times asserts that “a surge in terrorist attacks during the past two years, including recent ones targeting judges, suggests that armed violence is increasingly becoming an acceptable response”. This statement demonstrates, at best, a complete misunderstanding of the roots of radicalism. At worst, it amounts to a justification for violent extremism.
Today, terrorists in Egypt are part of a network of extremists who are bound by a singular distorted ideology, and by a shared goal of taking our region back hundreds of years. They are inspired by the radical teachings of the former Moslem Brotherhood leader Sayyid Kutb. Terrorists in Egypt share the same evil goals as terrorists in Iraq, Syria and Libya. To say that one court case will further enflame radicalism neglects the stark reality that terrorists in Egypt and across the region are already enflamed by a deadly hate. Asserting that decisions in Egypt’s legal system will breed more terrorists ignores the thousands of Western fighters who are flocking to join ISIS. According to the skewed logic of the New York Times editorial, who should bear the blame for the Oklahoma or Boston bombings?
Mohamed Tawfik, Egyptian Ambassador to the United States
3521 International Court, NW.
Washington, DC 20008.
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