THE AUSTRALIAN MAY 18, 2015
12:00AM
Jamie Walker
The assassination of two Egyptian
judges and a prosecutor in the volatile Sinai Peninsula
has raised concern of payback from Islamic extremists for the sentencing to
death of deposed president Mohamed Morsi.
The court officers were gunned
down hours after Morsi was condemned to die by a Cairo judge, along with about 100 fellow
Muslim Brotherhood supporters.
The sentence was denounced by
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and if carried out could make Morsi, a
boss of the brothers who became Egypt ’s
first freely elected leader, a martyr to Islamists worldwide.
The attack took place in the
provincial capital of El-Arish in the Sinai, where security forces are locked
in a bloody struggle with an offshoot of Islamic State.
A driver and second prosecutor
were wounded when gunmen opened fire, killing the three judicial officials as
they were being driven to court. There was no claim of responsibility for the
attack, but it was consistent with warnings of a backlash against Mr Morsi’s
sentencing.
Dressed in blue prison overalls,
the former president had stood inside a metal and glass cage as the death
verdict was pronounced on Saturday.
He was convicted for fleeing
prison at the height the 2011 “Arab spring’’ revolt against then president
Hosni Mubarak, having been detained with other Muslim Brotherhood leaders and
figures in the protest movement. Morsi overreached in office and he was
overthrown in a 2013 coup led by then general Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, who
supplanted him as president.
The death sentence must be
ratified by Egypt ’s
ranking Islamic figure, the Grand Mufti, and can be appealed through the
courts. However, further charges are pending over alleged fraud, insulting the
judiciary and leaking documents. On top of this, Morsi was sentenced to 20
years’ jail last month for inciting violence and overseeing the torture of
prisoners while president.
The charges have been rejected by
the Muslim Brotherhood, which was driven underground after being banned by Mr
Sisi, loading the legal trap that ensnared Australian journalist Peter Greste
and two colleagues from the Al Jazeera English news service.
Mr Erdogan called the death
sentence a return to “ancient Egypt’’ and was scathing of Western nations for
failing to support Morsi as an elected leader.
The US
expressed its “deep concern”, with a State Department official saying: “We have
consistently spoken out against the practice of mass trials and sentences,
which are conducted in a manner that is inconsistent with Egypt ’s international
obligations and the rule of law.”
Morsi and his co-accused were
convicted en-masse of conspiring with Hamas, the Brotherhood’s Palestinian arm,
to carry out the illegal jailbreak in January 2011 even though they would have
been in danger of their lives from Mubarak’s brutal security services.
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