CAIRO — The two-month-old Egyptian government on Tuesday stepped up its
use of swift military trials to lock up Islamist supporters of the
ousted president, Mohamed Morsi,
while an administrative court banned four satellite networks considered
sympathetic to them, including an Egyptian affiliate of Al Jazeera.
Although the government has promised a prompt return to inclusive
democracy and the rule of law, the military trials and network closings
extended its use of authoritarian tactics as it widens its crackdown on
Morsi supporters and the Muslim Brotherhood.
On Tuesday, a military court in Suez sentenced a man described as a
Brotherhood member to life in prison for violence directed at the Army.
Forty-eight others were given sentences of 5 to 15 years in prison for
similar charges, and 12 were acquitted, state news media reported.
All the charges concerned events on Aug. 14, the day that security
forces stormed two pro-Morsi sit-ins and killed at least 800 people.
The convictions, after a two-week trial, were among the first handed
down since the arrests of thousands of Brotherhood members after Mr.
Morsi’s ouster. Scores if not hundreds of Brotherhood leaders, including
Mr. Morsi, have been charged with inciting violence or murder.
Because military trials allow expedited convictions, they were a
favorite tool of former President Hosni Mubarak, although he never
jailed or killed as many Islamists in a two-month period as this new
government has.
Mona Seif, a liberal political activist who worked with the defense
lawyers on the cases, said she did not believe that all those detained
were Brotherhood members. “The military and the police just round up
whoever is around, and they get charged,” she said.
She said that last week eight detainees from a pro-Morsi protest near
Suez were sentenced to two years in prison after a one-week military
trial. The families of the defendants have not spoken out, she said, for
fear of drawing harsher penalties. And the Egyptian news media, she
said, now controlled almost entirely by supporters of the new
government, have refused to cover the cases.
Three satellite networks ordered closed on Tuesday were linked to the
Islamists, and the fourth was the channel known as Al Jazeera Egypt
Live. The Al Jazeera networks, owned by Qatar, are more sympathetic to
the Brotherhood than the rest of the media still allowed to broadcast,
and Al Jazeera Egypt Live has often covered the pro-Morsi protests when
other channels ignored them.
The court found the Al Jazeera network “a rebellious demon” and “a
partner in an international conspiracy that aims at splitting the
homeland,” the flagship state newspaper Al Ahram reported. The
newspaper’s Web site said the network sought to turn the public against
the military and the police, “to enable a popularly rejected group to
control the lives of the Egyptian people.”
The court found that all four channels “broadcast lies after the people’s revolution against the rule of the Muslim Brotherhood,” the massive street protests that preceded Mr. Morsi’s ouster, the newspaper reported.
At least two Al Jazeera
journalists remain in prison. Three journalists for its English
language affiliate were deported this week after days in detention. On
Sunday, an administrator was briefly detained after a police raid on the
English network’s office.
The network has also said it found evidence that the government had been trying to jam its satellite signals from Egypt.
“There has been a process of intimidation for weeks,” said an Al Jazeera
official, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of government
retribution.
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