Egypt Orders Arrest of Muslim Brotherhood's Leader Following Deaths
Egypt has ordered the arrest of Mohamed Badie, the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, along with several other key figures from the party that was behind ousted president Mohamed Morsi.
Badie is being blamed by the state prosecutor for inciting violence in Cairo on Monday, where pro-Morsi supporters clashed with soldiers and members of the opposition in incidents that left 50 people dead, BBC News reported.
Egypt's military has been rounding up members of the Brotherhood since Morsi was removed from power last week. The former president was given a 48-hour deadline to respond to demands from millions of Egyptians unhappy with the lack of economic and social progress the country had made in the last year, but remained defiant. After the deadline passed, the military said they were removing Morsi from power and suspending the constitution.
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Adly Mansour, the chief justice of the Supreme Constitutional Court, was sworn in as interim president on Thursday, a day after Morsi was ousted. He called it a "glorious event" that the nation's youth had taken the initiative to march out on the streets and make their voices heard.
Clashes between Morsi supporters and opponents continued this week, with the Muslim Brotherhood refusing to concede control of the country. Though Morsi was democratically elected, some close to the situation in Egypt say that the Muslim Brotherhood used voter intimidation to help him get elected.
"I know this firsthand because I know folks on the ground. In thousands of villages, during the election, they stood with guns outside the polling booths. And if a Christian wanted to go in to vote, they would say 'You go in, and we'll kill you.' And so hundreds of thousands of Christians couldn't vote," Dr. Michael Youssef, founding pastor of the 3,000-member Church of the Apostles in Atlanta, told The Christian Post in an interview on Monday.
The pastor added that Christians in Egypt are "very happy" with Morsi's ousting, noting that the Muslim Brotherhood has been pushing to have Sharia Law rule the Islamic country.
The Brotherhood, on the other hand, is claiming that last week's actions against Morsi were a military coup. Its supporters continue protesting outside the Rabaa al-Adawiya mosque in the capital, demanding the former president be released from detention and put back in charge.
"In a police state when the police force are criminals, the judiciary are traitors, and the investigators are the fabricators, what can one do?" Brotherhood spokesman Gehad el-Haddad told Reuters, insisting that the arrest warrants are "nothing more than an attempt by the police state to dismantle the Rabaa protest."
The Freedom and Justice Party, the Brotherhood's political wing which won Egypt's first free parliamentary elections, said that it has no intention of taking part in any cabinet unless Morsi is reinstated as president.
