Hassan Samir, judge investigating lawsuit of Wadi al-Natrun prison escape, said on Saturday that toppled President Mohamed Morsy, Muslim Brotherhood figures and foreign elements as leading “the most dangerous terrorist crime in the country’s history” by breaking into Egyptian prisons, smuggling prisoners and abducting soldiers.
In a statement, Samir explained that he believes the Muslim Brotherhood is part of a far-fetched international conspiracy that links the group to multiple countries and organizations. He claims that investigations conducted since April 2013 show the international organization of the Brotherhood has been preparing a plot for a long time with the help of foreign countries, the Brotherhood branch in Egypt, Hamas and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Its plan was to destroy Egypt so the local branch could divide it on a religious basis and serve purposes of foreign countries like Israel by allocating the Sinai peninsula to Palestinians based in Gaza.
Morsy and other Brotherhood figures, he says, communicated to carry out the plot through terrorist operations performed by elements that infiltrated into Egypt from Gaza via illegal tunnels. During the 2011 revolution, they attacked police institutions and broke into prisons to smuggle the Brotherhood leaders as well as Hamas and Hezbollah detainees. They granted the foreign elements with Egyptian identity cards, vehicles and petroleum substances.
He added that over 800 foreigners have snuck into Egypt via tunnels in Sinai during the revolution using cars and carrying weapons. They fired heavily on police and governmental establishments leaving many police personnel have been killed as a result. They then headed to prisons of Wadi al-Natrun, abu Zaabal and Marg, firing shots and missiles to enable them break into the premises. They killed over 50 police personnel and inmates while smuggling their elements from prisons. More than 20,000 other prisoners escaped by then. They looted and damaged police equipments from stocks. They also stole products of the prisons’ factories causing losses of hundreds of millions of pounds.
On Saturday, Samir referred Morsy, Mohamed Badie, Muslim Brotherhood supreme guide, his deputies Khariat al-Shater and Mahmoud Ezzat, Saad al-Katatny, former speaker of parliament as well as Essam al-Erian, Mohamed al-Beltagy and Saad al-Husseiny, the guidance bureau members and other 123 suspects affiliated to the international organization, Hamas and Hezbollah to Criminal Court.
They were accused of abducting police personnel, possessing heavy weapons, murdering policemen, setting governmental and police buildings on fire, breaking into prisons, stealing ammunition from its stocks and smuggling prisoners.
The judge also ordered keeping 20 suspects in custody pending investigations and arresting runaway suspects.
Samir’s accusations demonstrate the intolerance of the new interim government for the Brotherhood, who is currently Egypt’s only viable opposition to the current political establishment. Since ousting the former president, the new government, led by Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has been aiming to convince both the public and international spectators that the Brotherhood is a terrorist organization, though the proof they offer is questionable.
Edited translation from Al-Masry Al-Youm
