Supporters of ousted Egyptian president Mohammed Mursi before breaking fast on the third day of Ramadan during a protest near the Rabaa Al Adawiya mosque, in Cairo, yesterday.
Cairo/WASHINGTON: The United States yesterday urged the Egyptian military and interim leaders to free deposed president Mohammed Mursi for the first time since he was detained over a week ago.
State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said the United States agreed with Germany’s earlier appeal for Mursi to be released and was “publicly” making the same request.
A German ministry spokesman said a “trusted institution” such as the International Committee of the Red Cross should be granted access to Mursi.
Mursi has been held in a “safe place,” according to the interim leaders, and has not been seen in public since being ousted on July 3. In past days, while condemning arbitrary arrests, Psaki had refused to say whether the US administration believed Mursi should be freed.
Psaki said she was making the call for Mursi’s release “today, publicly,” but refused to say what had determined the US change of stance.
“We’ve expressed concerns from the beginning... about his arrest, about the politically motivated arbitrary arrests of the Muslim Brotherhood members,” she said.
US officials had also been in regular contact with all sectors of Egyptian society, she stressed.
Mursi’s Muslim Brotherhood and opponents of the removed president have called separate rallies across Cairo yesterday amid fears of further bloodshed in the Arab world’s most populous country.
“We continue to call for... the good treatment of those detained,” Psaki told reporters.
“We still continue to view these as politically motivated arrests, and still continue to believe that they should be released.”
US ambassador to Egypt Anne Patterson has also met with the interim Egyptian president Adly Mansour, she said.
Psaki said the interim leaders had “laid out a plan... but moving forward an inclusive process is what we would like to see.”
“While we recognise that president Mursi was democratically elected ... it’s about more than what happens at the ballot box. Most democratic transitions take years to take root and stabilise, especially following decades of autocratic rule.”
As night fell on Cairo, tens of thousands of Islamist protesters prayed and broke their fast together on the first weekend of the holy month of Ramadan.
They had spent the day protesting outside the Rabaa Al Adawiya mosque in the Nasr city neighbourhood, holding Egyptian flags and Qurans, chanting against the military coup that unseated Egypt’s first freely elected president.
“We are here to deliver a message to the military that we won’t give up on legitimacy. We will fight for our rights,” said protester Ashraf Fangari.
“We are here to defend our votes. They were stolen from us.”
Millions of Egyptians had taken to the streets to demand Mursi’s resignation — accusing him of being a puppet of the Muslim Brotherhood and of failing to fulfil the people’s aspirations of freedom and social justice.
The mass anti-Mursi demonstrations prompted an army intervention and days of bloody clashes.
“We will continue to resist. We will stay one or two months, or even one or two years. We won’t leave here until our president, Mohammed Mursi, comes back,” influential Islamist leader Safwat Hegazi told Friday’s crowd.
Hegazi demanded Mursi’s reinstatement, immediate parliamentary elections and a committee to oversee a plan for national reconciliation.
Thousands also massed in support of the ousted president outside the University of Cairo, watched over by a heavy security presence.
Despite the defiance, the interim authorities are pressing ahead with forming a new government amid help from Gulf states to shore up the faltering economy.
Hazem Al Beblawi, who was appointed premier on Tuesday, is expected to finalise the makeup of the interim government by the middle of next week, cabinet sources told the official Mena news agency.
The Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist group from which Mursi emerged, is now in tatters, its leadership detained, on the run or keeping a low profile following Mursi’s overthrow.
The onset of holy month of Ramadan, usually a time of communal sharing and unity, has been marked by tensions after deadly clashes.
Rival demonstrators also rallied in the capital yesterday. In Cairo’s Tahrir Square and outside the Ittihadiya Presidential Palace, hundreds of anti-Mursi protesters sat down for a festive iftar.
The rallies have raised fears of more of the violence that has shaken Egypt since the army removed Mursi. Yesterday, gunmen in the Suez Canal city of Ismailia killed a police conscript and wounded an officer when they tried to stop a vehicle the armed group was travelling in, Mena reported. The restive Sinai peninsula, home to Egypt’s luxury Red Sea resorts, has been hit by a surge of violence, with militants killing a police officer early yesterday, officials said.
The UN refugee agency yesterday expressed deep concern over a new Egyptian visa requirement for Syrians and reports that Syrian refugees were being returned to their war-ravaged country. “I appeal to the Egyptian authorities, as I have to all other governments in the world, to admit and protect all Syrians seeking refuge in their country,” UN High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres said in a statement. Cairo estimates that up to 300,000 Syrians currently live in Egypt.
AFP
