Mursi’s death sentence condemned

Ayman Abdul Bari

Ramadan 14, 1436 2015-07-01

Letters To The Editor

by Ayman Abdul Bari (Letters To The Editor, Crescent International Vol. 44, No. 5, Ramadan, 1436)

The Egyptian military regime and its kangaroo courts have sentenced scores of people to death, including the first-ever elected president in Egypt’s history, Mohamed Mursi. It has evoked strong global condemnation.

There is something seriously wrong in Egypt, indeed, in much of the Muslim world. Last month, an Egyptian court handed down death sentences to the first-ever democratically elected president of Egypt, Mohamed Mursi, and 90 others, some in absentia. The sentences were related to a mass jailbreak during the early-2011 popular uprising against the former dictator Hosni Mubarak.

In July 2013, Defence Minister Abdel Fattah el-Sisi not only illegally deposed Mursi but also carried out a massacre of several thousand innocent people, among them women and children whose only crime was that they were camped peacefully demanding the reintatement of the elected President Mursi. El-Sisi’s coup was a crime; the break from jail of an illegitimate regime was not.

The death sentences issued on the eve of Ramadan have evoked strong condemnation globally. Words must be followed by action. Egypt must be boycotted and its officials quarantined for crimes against humanity. The courts in Egypt have no authority to sentence an elected president to death who was illegally overthrown. Instead, el-Sisi and his fellow henchmen must be put on trial. Mursi’s rule was marred by many mistakes but that does not justify the death sentence.

Ayman Abdul Bari
Calgary, AB, Canada