Pro-Government Militias
Documentation for Muslim Brotherhood Gangs
Dec. 10, 2012 The Guardian
Dec. 11, 2012 Jerusalem Post
The leader and sponsor of these paramilitary wings is Khairat al-Shater, a businessman who spent 20 years in prison on terrorism-related charges. These groups have the additional duty to sabotage any demonstrations organized by political opponents, to accomplish which they resort to all possible means, including firebombs and sexual harassment of female opponents.
Since the Islamists are motivated by a holy ideology and are ready for personal sacrifice, while their opponents lack such motivation, the streets belong to Islamists and their paramilitary wings.
Dec. 11, 2012 New York Times
The abuses, during a night of street fighting between Islamists and their opponents, have become clear through an accumulation of video and victim testimonies that are now hurting the credibility of Mr. Morsi and his allies as they push forward to this weekend's referendum on an Islamist-backed draft constitution.
To critics of Islamists, the episode on Wednesday recalled the tactics of the ousted president, Hosni Mubarak, who often saw a conspiracy of ''hidden hands'' behind his domestic opposition and deployed plainclothes thugs acting outside the law to punish those who challenged him. The difference is that the current enforcers are driven by the self-righteousness of their religious ideology, rather than money.
It is impossible to know how much Mr. Morsi, a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood's political arm, knew about the Islamists' vigilante justice. But human rights advocates say the detentions raised troubling questions about statements made by the president during his nationally televised address on Thursday. In it, Mr. Morsi appears to have cited confessions obtained by his Islamist supporters, the advocates said, when he promised that confessions under interrogation would show that protesters outside his palace acknowledged ties to his political opposition and had taken money to commit violence. (…)
Officials of the Muslim Brotherhood said the group opposed such vigilante justice and did not organize the detentions. And in at least one case one victim said a senior figure of the group rescued her from captivity. But the officials also acknowledged that some of their senior leadership was on the scene at the time. They said some of their members took part in the detentions, along with more hard-line Islamists. (…)
She was held in an empty police booth by a group of Brotherhood members and more hard-line Islamists, she said, and Ahmed Sobei, a more senior Brotherhood official, tried to persuade them to release her, both said.
''At that point we couldn't get people out,'' Mr. Sobei said in an interview. ''They were a mix, from here and there. If they were just Muslim Brotherhood, we would've gotten her out since the first moment. I would've been able to get her out right away.''
''Did they beat people up? Yes, they did, but there were thugs there as well,'' he said. ''Thugs infiltrated both sides. It was impossible to tell who's on which side.''
Ramy Sabry, a friend captured with Ms. Shahba, said he was held in a gatehouse by the presidential palace with a crowd that grew to nearly 50, according to an interview with Human Rights Watch for a report in progress.
''There were several members of the Brotherhood'' among his captors, he said. ''I knew they were Brotherhood because I heard them saying that they had spoken to Brotherhood leaders on the phone.''
Mina Philip, an engineer whose shirt was stripped off when he was beaten, said his captors called him ''an infidel, a secular, a paid thug.''
''They kept asking, 'Who paid you?' '' he said.
Dec. 14, 2012 New York Times
The complaints by the prosecutor, Mustafa Khater, have raised some of the most serious questions to date about the Morsi government's commitment to the impartial rule of law, as well as about its ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist group whose political arm the president once led.
Since the clashes outside the presidential palace last week, accounts have appeared of Mr. Morsi's Islamist supporters detaining and abusing dozens of opponents, whom they accused of being paid to attack them and kept tied up overnight by the gates of the palace. A spokesman for Mr. Morsi said the president was not responsible for those events and had ordered an investigation. […]
Dec. 17, 2012 BBC Monitoring Middle East
He is Egypt's president-in-waiting, the Muslim Brotherhood's chief strategist and iron man. These are some appellations of Khayrat al-Shatir, the Brotherhood's second-in-command allegedly engineering its moves to tighten its grip on Egypt.
Al-Shatir fortunes dramatically reversed in a span of a year. A political detainee under the now-toppled president Hosni Mubarak, he was released shortly after the former strongman's overthrow in February last year to become one of the most influential politicians in post-Mubarak Egypt.
Having kept a low profile since his aborted bid for Egypt's presidency in April this year, Al-Shatir, 62, appeared last week at a public conference in which he threatened the secular-minded opposition. His threats have raised questions about his purported role in orchestrating deadly violence against opponents of Muhammad Mursi who hails from the Brotherhood. "Our first battle is not to protect the [Brotherhood] offices from attacks, but to stand by legitimacy against conspiracies," a grim-faced Al-Shatir said.
More than 20 offices of the Brotherhood have recently been torched by protesters infuriated by Mursi's decree granting himself sweeping new powers.
Top financier
Al-Shatir, seen as the Brotherhood's top financier, has accused unnamed businessmen loyal to Mubarak of plotting to derail Islamists' rule in Egypt. "We have got recorded phone calls made by some figures from the former regime planning to cause chaos in Egypt to give the impression that the current ruling system is falling apart," Al-Shatir said. He estimated that the opposition makes up 20,000 to 50,000 of Egypt's 85 million population. (…)
"He dominates the group in terms of money, media and information," he added. "Almost two years after the revolution, the sources of the Brotherhood's and Al-Shatir's money should be investigated."
Several opposition activists have recently filed suits against Al-Shatir, claiming he was the architect of a deadly crackdown on opponents outside the presidential palace in Cairo on 5 December. "Al-Shatir officially has no state post that would have justified his recent talk about alleged conspiracies against President Muhammad Mursi, " said Mustafa al-Labad, the director of the Cairo-based Middle East Centre for Regional and Strategic Studies. "It is ironic that he [Al-Shatir] portrays himself as an advocate of legitimacy and democracy, while his group has no legal status," added Al-Labad. (…)
March 18, 2013 The New Zealand Herald
The crowd was responding to an assault on journalists, who claimed they were attacked by Brotherhood members Saturday evening during coverage of a meeting.
The journalists said that after a group of activists sprayed anti-Brotherhood graffiti on the ground outside the group"s Cairo headquarters, the Brotherhood guards attacked with sticks and chains.
Brotherhood spokesman Mahmoud Ghozlan said in a statement that guards outside the building were provoked and insulted by the activists and journalists.
June 21, 2013 Jerusalem Post
July 4, 2013 Washington Post
President Mohamed Morsi's dramatic fall from power came after months of political turmoil and days of tense protests, as millions of Egyptians took to the streets to call for his exit. Those protesters were jubilant Wednesday night, celebrating the ouster of a leader they viewed as both autocratic and incompetent.
Jan. 8, 2014 Business Monitor Online
The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt is facing perhaps its most serious crisis in its 85-year history, although we believe predictions of the group's demise are premature. Over the past year, the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), the Muslim Brotherhood's political wing in Egypt, has been ousted from power, seen its assets seized by the Egyptian government, and had its activities banned. Most recently, the group was declared a terrorist organisation by a court following a suicide bombing of a police headquarters in the Nile Delta, giving the authorities more power to crack down on the Brotherhood. Former President Mohammed Morsi is also facing charges, and the group's Supreme Guide, Mohamed Badie, Deputy Supreme Guide Khairat El-Shater, and senior member Mohamed El-Beltagy are among dozens of high and mid-level Brotherhood leaders who have been detained and face charges including incitement of violence.