Deposed Egyptian President Mohamed Morsy has been ordered jailed for 15 days over accusations of collaborating with Hamas to release himself and other Muslim Brotherhood members from prison in 2011 and attacking police stations, Egyptian media reported Friday.
The nation’s military ousted Morsy, the country’s first democratically elected president, in early July after days of mass demonstrations. He has been in detention since then while an interim government took shape.
Immediately after the coup, the prosecutor opened an investigation into claims that Morsy and top leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood incited violence and the killing of protesters. But the charges revealed Friday stem from an incident that took place two years ago, before Morsy was elected president.
The investigation into the jailbreak from Wadi-Natroun prison in the days after Egypt’s 2011 revolution was initiated two weeks ago. In the incident, 19 Muslim Brotherhood members are accused of having escaped from the prison, including Morsy, the state-run EGYNews reported.
More protest expected in Egypt
The prosecutors who ordered the investigations said the escape was plotted by “foreign elements” including Hamas, its military wing, the Islamic Palestinian Army and Hezbollah. The Muslim Brotherhood was named as a domestic group that cooperated with those who broke them out of prison.
Morsy will be questioned on whether he collaborated with Hamas in the prison break and in attacks on police stations, the government-run Ahram Online reported.
He is accused of not only escaping, but also destroying the prison’s official records as well as the intentional killing and abduction of police officers and prisoners.
The military has not commented on Morsy’s whereabouts. When he was first detained, a Muslim Brotherhood spokesman said that the deposed leader was initially under house arrest at the presidential Republican Guard headquarters in Cairo and later moved to the Defense Ministry.
A number of Muslim Brotherhood leaders have been arrested since the coup, including eight leading Freedom and Justice Party figures. The party says the arrests were politically motivated and illegal. Human rights organizations have backed the political motivation claim.
United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called for the immediate release of Morsy and other detained leaders “or have their cases reviewed transparently without delay.”
This week, Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, the head of the military, called for mass demonstrations Friday to support the country’s armed forces.
Morsy’s opponents are calling on people to turn out to support the new government and protest “against terrorism
