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Thousands of supporters of Mohamed Morsi have gathered in Nasr City in the Egyptian capital to protest against his ouster as the country’s president in a military coup. The crowds swelled further after Friday afternoon prayers in response to the call by a coalition of Islamist groups led by the Muslim Brotherhood for demonstrations against the coup.
The coalition on Thursday urged people to take part in a “Friday of Rejection” protest following weekly prayers. The call is being seen as a test of whether Morsi still has a support base in the country, and how the army will deal with it.
Morsi, who was Egypt’s first democratically elected president, belongs to the Muslim Brotherhood movement .
While the military coup came in the wake of mass protests seeking Morsi’s dismissal, the ex-president’s supporters are angry and have denounced the army’s intervention. They have vowed to continue with their sit-in protest and march towards the defence ministry.
Dozens of people were wounded in clashes in Morsi’s home city Zagazig on Thursday, raising fears of more violence.
Al Jazeera’s Jamal Elshayyal, reporting from Nasr City in Cairo, said:”People here say this is no longer only a pro-Morsi rally, it is about resisting the military coup as much as it is about reinstating the first and only ever democratically elected civilian president.”
Meanwhile, Egypt’s military has appealed for conciliation and warned against unrest, as police rounded up senior Islamists ahead of the planned Brotherhood protests yesterday.
The authorities have also closed the Rafah border crossing with Gaza for the day.
Army, led by General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi , released a statement later on Thursday on its Facebook page, saying that everyone had a right to peaceful protest, but that right should not be abused.
Excessive protests, the army warned, could lead to civil unrest, while reiterating that it was not targeting any political group. “Wisdom, true nationalism and constructive human values that all religions have called for, require us now to avoid taking any exceptional or arbitrary measures against any faction or political current,” the statement said.
Even the newly sworn-in interim leader Adly Mansour, who replaced Morsi as the president, used his inauguration on Thursday to heal the relationship with the Brotherhood.
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The Muslim Brotherhood are part of this people and are invited to participate in building the nation as nobody will be excluded, and if they respond to the invitation, they will be welcomed,” he said.
U
N human rights chief Navi Pillay is concerned by reports of the detention of leading members of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood.
Her spokesman Rupert Colville told a regular UN briefing yesterday that specific crimes would need to have been committed to justify the detentions, and said Egypt’s new rulers should make clear why the figures were being detained or release them.
Among the top Brotherhood leaders arrested were the group’s supreme leader, Mohamed Badie.
He, and his powerful deputy, Khairat el-Shater, were wanted for questioning on their role in the killing this week of eight demonstrators in clashes outside the Brotherhood’s Cairo headquarters.
A judicial source said the prosecution would on Monday begin questioning members of the group, including Morsi, for “insulting the judiciary” as the charges began to pile up.
Morsi is reportedly being held at a military detention centre.
Other Brotherhood leaders would be questioned on the same charges, including the head of the group’s political arm Saad al-Katatni, Mohammed al-Beltagui, Gamal Gibril and Taher Abdel Mohsen.
Morsi and other senior leaders have also been banned from travel pending investigation into their involvement in a prison break in 2011.
Meanwhile, African Union (AU) has suspended Egypt from all activities following the overthrow of the government, a senior official has said.
The decision of the 54-member bloc came while demonstrations in support of ousted president Mohammed Morsi were going on in Cairo, the Egyptian capital.
“As mandated by the relevant AU instruments, the African Union Peace and Security Council decides to suspend the participation of Egypt in AU activities until the restoration of constitutional order,” Admore Kambudzi, Secretary of the Peace and Security Council of AU, said after a meeting yesterday.
Suspension decision is the AU’s usual response to any interruption of constitutional rule by a member state.
Morsi was removed from the office by the army on Wednesday after mass protests against his government. — AFP
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