Egyptian court confirms death sentences against Muslim Brotherhood leader and nearly 200 supporters.

Egyptian court confirms death sentences against Brotherhood leader, nearly 200 supporters. (Taz).

An Egyptian court confirmed on Saturday death sentences against the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood and 182 supporters, a strong sign that the crackdown on the group will continue under new President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, Reuters reported.

Mohamed Badie and other defendants were charged over violence that erupted in the southern Egyptian town of Minya following the ouster, led by former army chief Sisi, of Islamist President Mohamed Mursi, a senior Brotherhood member, last July.

One police officer was killed in the violence.

The court's decision came two months after it referred the case against Badie, general guide of the now outlawed Brotherhood, and 682 other defendants to a top religious authority, the first step to imposing a death penalty.

Those preliminary sentences triggered outrage among Western governments and rights groups, with the United States and European Union both saying they were appalled by the rulings.

Saturday's decision comes just two weeks after Sisi took office as president after winning an election in May. Since Mursi's overthrow last year, which was followed by protests by his supporters, hundreds of Islamist protesters have been killed and thousands jailed in a crackdown by security forces.

In the run-up to the election, Sisi said that the Brotherhood - Egypt's oldest, most organized and successful political group - was finished and would not exist under his rule.

Amnesty International described Saturday's verdicts as "the latest example of the Egyptian judiciary's bid to crush dissent".

There was no immediate reaction on the ruling from the Brotherhood, whose members are either in jail or on the run, but the streets around the court compound and in most Egyptian cities remained quiet.

Out of a total 683 defendants, around 100 are in detention and the rest were tried in absentia. Four were jailed for life while 496 were acquitted, according to judiciary sources. All verdicts can be appealed before a higher court.

"Those rulings are a continued farce," prominent Egyptian human rights activist and lawyer Gamal Eid said on Saturday. "And the state is still insisting that the judiciary is independent. I don't know how we can believe that when we see rulings like that. It is against logic and common sense. It is a joke."

OTHER CASES

The same court had a few months ago confirmed death sentences on 37 Brotherhood supporters in rulings that were part of a final judgment on 528 Muslim Brotherhood supporters who had received initial death sentences.

In a separate case, a Cairo court referred Badie and 13 other Brotherhood supporters on Thursday to the Mufti, a top religious authority, on charges of murder and firearms possession related to clashes during the protests last July. Around 500 army and police officers have been killed since Mursi's fall.

Badie and other senior Brotherhood leaders including Mursi are standing trial in other cases.

Sisi, late on Friday, held a brief meeting at Cairo airport with Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah whose country, like Egypt, has branded the Brotherhood a terrorist organization, viewing its Islamist doctrines as a threat to Saudi dynastic rule.

The Egyptian state had in November issued a law that banned protests without police permission. Many liberal and Islamist activists have been arrested in the past few months for protesting without a license.

Outside the Minya court compound on Saturday, around 200 people, mostly relatives of defendants that were freed, gathered to celebrate the ruling. "Long live justice, long live Sisi," they chanted.

Saudi King Abdullah to visit Egypt for first time since 2011 uprising.

Saudi King Abdullah to visit Egypt for first time since 2011 uprising.(Taz).

Saudi King Abdullah will visit on Friday for the first time since the 2011 uprising, in a show of support for newly-elected President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi, the kingdom said, AP reported.

Egyptian officials said Thursday that Sisi will receive the ailing monarch upon his arrival from Morocco, where he spent time for medical rehabilitation.

The visit will be Abdullah's first since the 2011 ouster of Hosni Mubarak, a close ally of both Saudi Arabia and the United States. Officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the press.


Saudi Arabia and other Gulf nations showered Egypt with billions of dollars in aid after Sisi, then the army's top general, overthrew Islamist President Mohammad Mursi amid massive protests last summer. Hmmm......"We must behead the head of the snake"?

Court sentences Brotherhood leaders Badie, Hegazi and El-Beltagi to death

Saudi King Abdullah declares support for Egypt against terrorism

Saudi King Abdullah declares support for Egypt against terrorism.(AA).
Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz announced on Friday that the kingdom supports Egypt in its fight “against terrorism.”
King Abdullah said Egypt’s stability is being targeted by “haters,” warning that anyone interfering in Egypt’s internal affairs is "igniting sedition." King Abdullah added that Egypt is able to cross to safety.
Saleh al-Qallab, a Jordanian political analyst, told Al Arabiya that Saudi Arabia will not leave the Egyptian military alone.
 "The situation in Egypt is very critical and Saudi Arabia has put itself on the right side of history"  he said.

Qallab added that King Abdullah had to “take a historical step and side with the correct form of Islam.”
Abdul Latif Minawi, an Egyptian columnist and former head of Egypt’s state TV, said the Saudi position comes in response to “Western positions, which are difficult to understand.”
“If Western leaders plan to repeat the Libyan scenario in Egypt, this will not be achieved in Egypt,” Minawi said.
He said “various Western interests come together in this situation to ensure the collapse of Egypt.”
“The Saudi position is another stance that understands where the regional interests lie,” Menawi said.
The statements of King Abdullah came after several Western countries and Turkey threatened to suspend ties with Egypt over a crackdown on Muslim Brotherhood supporters.
Turkey had summoned its ambassador to Egypt pushed for a U.N. Security Council meeting to be held yesterday over the situation in the Arab world’s biggest nation.
The United States cancelled a joint military drill with the Egyptian armed forces. It also warned that the traditional military ties with the Egypt are at risk if the violence continues there.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said after speaking with French President Francois Hollande by phone on Friday that Germany would review its ties with Egypt, and both she and Hollande felt the European Union should do the same, Reuters reported.

“The chancellor explained that in view of the latest developments, the German government would review its relations with Egypt,” Merkel said, according to Reuters

Saudis, Gulf emirates actively aided Egypt’s military coup, settling score for Mubarak ouster.

Saudis, Gulf emirates actively aided Egypt’s military coup, settling score for Mubarak ouster.HT: Debka.

The lightening coup which Wednesday, July 3, overthrew President Mohamed Morsi put in reverse gear for the first time the Obama administration’s policy of sponsoring the Muslim Brotherhood movement as a moderate force for Arab rule and partner in its Middle East policies.

DEBKAfile reveals that the Egyptian military could not have managed their clockwork coup without the aid of Saudi and Dubai intelligence and funding.

Saudi Arabia and the UAE threw their weight and purses behind Egypt’s generals aiming to put their first big spoke in the US-sponsored Arab Revolt (or Spring), after they failed to hold the tide back in Libya, Egypt and thus far Syria. To learn the name of the Egyptian politician designated to lead his country when the army bows out, read the coming issue of DEBKA Weekly due out Friday.

The coup leader, Defense Minister and army chief Gen. Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, had two more Saudi-Gulf commitments in his pocket, say DEBKAfile's Middle East sources:

1. Should the Obama administration cut off the annual US aid allocation of $1.3 billion, Saudi Arabia and the UAE would make up the military budget’s shortfall;

2. The Saudis, UAE and other Gulf nations, such as Bahrain and Kuwait, would immediately start pumping out substantial funds to keep the Egyptian economy running. The Egyptian masses would be shown that in a properly managed economy, they could be guaranteed a minimal standard of living and need not go hungry as many did under Muslim Brotherhood rule.

According to our sources, the Saudis and the UAE pledged to match the funds Qatar transferred to the Muslim Brotherhood’s coffers in Cairo in the past year, amounting to the vast sum of $13 billion.

This explains President Barack Obama’s caution Thursday morning, July 4, in his expression of deep concern over the ousting of the Egyptian president and the suspension of its constitution. He urged the military to restore government to civilian hands - without accusing them outright of a coup d’etat - and to “avoid arresting President Moris and his supporters.”

The US president refrained from cutting off aid to Egypt, now under military rule, only ordering his administration “to assess what the military's actions meant for US foreign aid to Egypt.”

Thursday morning, Washington ordered US diplomats and their families to leave Cairo at once, leaving just a skeleton staff at the embassy for emergencies. DEBKAfile: This step is only one symptom of the broad gulf developing between the Obama administration and Egypt’s post-coup administration headed by Defense Minister and coup leader Gen. El-Sisi

By means of the successful military putsch in Cairo, Saudi King Abdullah had his revenge for the toppling of his friend Hosni Mubarak in February 2011, for which he has never forgiven President Obama whom he held responsible.

The Saudi-Gulf intervention in Egypt’s change of government also ushers in a new stage of the Arab Revolt for the Middle East. For the first time, a group of traditionally pro-US conservative Arab governments has struck out on its own to fill the leadership vacuum left by the Obama administration’s unwillingness to pursue direct initiatives in the savage Syrian civil war or forcibly preempt Iran’s drive for a nuclear bomb.

The removal of Muslim Brotherhood rule in Egypt has far-reaching ramifications for Israel. In the immediate term, it gives Israel some security relief – especially, easing the dangers posed from Sinai to its southern regions.
The radical Palestinian Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood offshoot which rules the Gaza Strip, has suffered the most damaging political and military setback in its history with the loss of its parent and patron in Cairo.

The big question facing Egypt’s still uncertain future is: Will Riyadh and the UAE follow through on their backing for Gen. Fattah El-Sisi, the most powerful man in Egypt today, and release the promised funds for rehabilitating the Egyptian economy?Read the full story here.

Saudi King Abdullah appears for first time since Nov. 17 surgery.

Saudi King Abdullah appears for first time since Nov. 17 surgery.(AA).Saudi King Abdullah bin Abdul Azizi appeared on television on Wednesday for the first time since undergoing a back surgery on Nov. 17. In pictures broadcast on state television, the monarch, who is in his late 80s, looked in good health as he was shown receiving members of the royal family in Riyadh. King Abdullah has introduced cautious economic and social reforms in the conservative Islamic kingdom aimed at reconciling Saudi Arabia’s religious traditions with the needs of a modern economy and youthful population. Abdullah's heir is Crown Prince Salman, who is 76.Read the full story here.

Video - Ex-Israeli intelligence officer: Saudis put Obama in the White House

HT: IsraelMatzav.More here.

Saudis Vow ‘Iron Fist’ to Quell Shiite Unrest.

Saudis Vow ‘Iron Fist’ to Quell Shiite Unrest.(VOC).Saudi Arabia on Tuesday said itssecurity forces would quell unrest in its Shiite dominated Qatif region with “an iron fist.”The ultraconservative Saudi Kingdom blamed an unnamed foreign power – widely understood to be Shiite Iran – for stirring up unrest and backing attacks on its security forces in the Eastern Province.“It is the state’s right to confront those that confront it first … and the Saudi Arabian security forces will confront such situations … with determination and force and with an iron first,” the Saudi Interior Ministry said in a statement.The statement was in response to a sermon preached in the Qatif area of the Eastern Province last week criticizing the government’s handling of the protests there, in which at least six people have been killed.Clashes between Shiite protesters and security forces in Qatif began at the height of the Arab uprisings last year. Four people were killed in November, one in January and one earlier this month.Members of the Shiite minority have long complained of discrimination, saying it is harder for them to find government jobs, attend university or worship in the open than it is for Sunni citizens.The government says it does not discriminate against Shiites and has said the increased security is intended to protect Qatif residents. It has repeatedly blamed the clashes on people attacking security forces.Tuesday’s statement said the security forces were using “the greatest restraint … despite continuing provocations” and “will not act except in self defense and will not initiate confrontations”.“Some of those few (who attacked security forces) are manipulated by foreign handsbecause of the kingdom’s honorable foreign policy positions towards Arab and Islamic countries,” the ministry’s spokesman said in the statement.Saudi Arabia and its Gulf Arab allies are in a struggle for hegemony over the Persian Gulf with Iran, whom they have repeatedly accused of provoking their indigenous Shiite populations to rebellion.Hmmmm........"Saudi King Abdullah has repeatedly urged the ... "Cut off head of snake" .Read the full story here.