Muslim Brotherhood accepts attorney general remaining in office

Rana Muhammad Taha
3 Min Read
Prosecutor General Hisham Barakat listed Sunday leading figures in the banned Muslim Brotherhood group as “terrorists”, based on the new “terrorist entities” law. (AFP File Photo)

The Muslim Brotherhood will not protest the attorney general remaining in office, their spokesperson Mahmoud Ghozlan has said.

Attorney General Abdel Meguid Mahmoud announced he will remain in his post after meeting with Vice President Mahmoud Mekki on Saturday at the presidential palace.

The Muslim Brotherhood released a statement on their website denying responsibility for clashes in Tahrir Square on Friday. AFP
The Muslim Brotherhood released a statement on their website denying responsibility for clashes in Tahrir Square on Friday.
AFP

“The issue of the prosecutor general has been temporarily resolved,” Muslim Brotherhood lawyer Abdel Moneim Abdel Maqsood said, confirming Ghozlan’s statements.

The Muslim Brotherhood released a statement on their website, IkhwanOnline, on Saturday denying responsibility for clashes in Tahrir Square on Friday, describing them as “utter lies” and “deliberate slander accusations.”

In the statement, it was claimed that over 70 Muslim Brotherhood youth were injured on Friday as “thugs” chased them from the square, while the Brotherhood made their way to the march to the High Court. The Brotherhood called for the arrest and prosecution of those responsible.

“We filed a report accusing those thugs of being behind the violence committed in the square,” Abdel Maqsood said, adding that the Brotherhood did not issue any accusations against any revolutionary powers who were in the square on Friday.

As for the incident of destroying a stage set up by members of the Socialist Popular Alliance Party, the Muslim Brotherhood claimed it was committed by, “thugs wearing Freedom and Justice party (FJP) T-shirts.”

“We caught around three to four thugs who were operating in the square on Friday,” Abdel Maqsood said. “They have been detained for four days.” He added that one of the bus drivers whose bus was burnt on Friday recognised one person as having set the bus on fire.

In its statement, the Brotherhood said although it was aware that a “protest against the government’s policy in the first hundred days of the elected President’s term” was due to be held in Tahrir Square, some of the political parties and movements who called for the protest were also protesting the acquittal of all the Battle of the Camel defendants. Being “shocked and appalled” by the acquittal verdict themselves, the Brotherhood decided to hold a protest in Tahrir Square on Friday as well, protesting the circumstances which led to such an acquittal and “urge the prosecutor general to do his duty.”

“We thought that the area of agreement afforded by the camel case verdicts was capable of ensuring cooperation in this matter, recognising other parties’ right to peaceful expression of whatever they disagree with us about,” the statement read, explaining the Brotherhood’s decision to protest on the same day and in the same place as other groups.

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