GLAD ALL OVER: Women raise victory signs in Cairo’s Tahrir Square yesterday after the ouster of President Mohammed Morsi. (EPA)
GLAD ALL OVER: Women raise victory signs in Cairo’s Tahrir Square yesterday after the ouster of President Mohammed Morsi. (
)
Egypt is bracing for a counterrevolt today after Islamists called for a nationwide march and rallies to overturn what they called the army-imposed “police state.”
The Muslim Brotherhood and other groups planned a massive “Friday of Rejection” show of strength to demand the return to power of ousted President Mohammed Morsi.
Egyptian police vowed to keep the protests peaceful by confiscating weapons — while the army continued to round up members of Morsi’s government to face criminal charges.
Arrest warrants for up to 300 Morsi aides have been issued, Egyptian media reports said.
Morsi on Wednesday night went from being one of the most powerful men in the Arab world to a prisoner who might be charged with “insulting the judiciary” and escaping from prison more than two years ago, officials said.
The Brotherhood’s “supreme leader,” Mohammed Badie, and its deputy chief, Khairat el-Shater — who were widely seen as the real powers behind Morsi — could be charged with the deaths of eight protesters in last week’s massive demonstrations. Badie was arrested yesterday for “incitement to murder.”
Also, the Brotherhood’s former head, Mahdi Aakef, and his bodyguards were arrested in Cairo — with four weapons, sources told the MENA news agency.
The Obama administration launched a lobbying effort yesterday to pressure Egypt’s new leadership to avoid “arbitrary arrests,” officials said.
Amid the crackdown, Morsi’s little-known successor, Adly Mansour, 67, was sworn in and said the massive protests that began Sunday had brought Egypt together.
“The greatest thing accomplished on June 30 is that it united all of the people,” said Mansour, who had been promoted by Morsi days earlier to become chief justice of Egypt’s Constitutional Court.
Meanwhile, Egyptians carried the fireworks-fueled jubilation of Wednesday night into another day of celebration.
Army jets performed dazzling fly-bys in formation, with colored smoke, over central Cairo in the afternoon and again at dusk. Helicopters bore the Egyptian flag above cheering citizens in Tahrir Square.
Egypt’s media were virtually unanimous in praise of the army’s announcement Wednesday that Morsi was being removed.
“And the people’s revolution was victorious,” said the front-page headline of the state-owned Al-Akhbar newspaper.
But there were new clashes between stone-throwing pro- and anti-Morsi forces yesterday in the Nile Delta province of Sharqiya, the home of Morsi’s extended family. At least 30 people were reported wounded.
The anti-Morsi tone of Egypt’s media was ensured when authorities cut off four Islamist TV stations, banned the Muslim Brotherhood’s newspaper and raided the offices of Qatar-based Al-Jazeera’s Egyptian affiliate.
The Obama administration remains caught in an embarrassing position between US allies, who have denounced the takeover, and foes, who have praised it.
Syria’s embattled dictator, Bashar al-Assad, gloated that Morsi’s ouster is “the fall of political Islam” throughout the world. His regime hailed the military intervention as “a great achievement.”
But France’s President François Hollande said, “We must do everything” to restore “the democratic process” in Egypt.
German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle called the military intervention “a major setback for democracy.”
The African Union is poised to suspend Egypt because of the “unconstitutional” regime change, officials said.
But the Muslim world was split, with Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates in favor of and Turkey and Tunisia strongly opposed to the Egyptian army’s intervention.
US officials stuck to President Obama’s call for all factions “to address the legitimate grievances of the Egyptian people.”
Obama huddled with his national-security team in the White House Situation Room to find a way to press for a “quick and responsible” return to democratic rule, aides said.
The annual allotment of $1.3 billion in US aid to Egypt that was approved in May is under review, officials said.
By not taking a firmer stand with its longtime ally, the United States risks offending Morsi foes as well as supporters, analysts said.
In Cairo, the Arabic-language newspaper Al-Tahrir summed up one view when it ran an English-language headline on its front page: “It’s a revolution, not a coup, Mr. Obama!”
Egyptian Foreign Minister Mohamed Kamel Amr called Secretary of State John Kerry yesterday to make the same point.
“The American side is a strategic partner for Egypt, and the welfare of Egypt is important to them,” Amr said. “I hope that they read the situation the right way, that this is not a military coup in any way.”
“This was actually the overwhelming will of the people,” said Amr, who gave his resignation to Morsi in protest on Tuesday.
But as a nonpartisan career diplomat, he remains in charge of foreign affairs until Mansour forms a new government.
Kerry pressed Amr to explain reports of the anti-Morsi crackdown.
“He was worried about the status of human rights, understandably,” Amr said. “I assured him there is no retribution, no acts of vengeance, that nobody will be treated outside the law.”
Kerry spent the Independence Day holiday working the phones, with calls to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the foreign ministers of Qatar, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates, officials said.
Mansour held out an olive branch to Morsi’s supporters in his inaugural speech.
“The Muslim Brotherhood are part of this people and are invited to participate in building the nation, as nobody will be excluded, and if they respond to the invitation, they will be welcomed,” he said.
But the Brotherhood, which won major victories in Egypt’s first-ever democratic elections in 2011 and 2012, refused to have anything to do with what it called the “illegal military coup.”