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| Mohamed Morsi (1951-2019) |
With sadness I read about the collapse and death of ex-President of Egypt Mohamed Morsi while testifying in court yesterday.
This kind and humane man was born in a village in the Nile Delta.
He earned a bachelor's degree in engineering at Cairo University.
He earned a doctorate in material science from the University of Southern California.
He taught at Cal State University in Northridge, for a year or two, where I was teaching 2007-2015.
He returned to the state of Ash Sharqiya to teach at Zagazig University.
When the Arab Spring uprisings occurred in 2011, long-term dictator Hosni Mubarak was toppled.
In 2012, in Egypt's only free and fair election, Mohamed Morsi was elected, representing the Muslim Brotherhood. I made all my students take note that a former CSUN professor was now President of Egypt. They had to learn what the Muslim Brotherhood was and who Morsi was in my courses in Women & Religion during 2012 and 2013.
President Morsi, alas, was an engineer at heart, not a politician. He lasted only a year before his defense minister, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, seized power in a military coup.
Coptic Pope Tawadros II took part in the council that organized the coup. Two months later 817 people protesting the coup were killed by the military. Many survivors fled to Turkey.
The US did not officially admit that it was a coup because that would have meant cutting aid to Egypt, our ally. President Obama allowed that looking the other way to happen.
The coup should have been the end of the story. But it was not. Professor Morsi was not allowed to return to teaching.
el-Sisi branded the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist group though it had long been part of mainstream politics in Egypt.
He kept Morsi in prison without his medications for diabetes, high blood pressure and liver disease. He was subjected to numerous trials and at one point was sentenced to death, a decision later overturned by a court.
The NY Times reports:
Unlike most prisoners in Egyptian prisons, Mr. Morsi was barred from receiving deliveries of food and medicine from his family, said Ms. Whitson of Human Rights Watch. In addition to being held in solitary confinement, he was denied access to the news media, letters or other communication with the outside world. His wife and other family members were allowed visit just three times in the six years he was imprisoned.
He died in a sealed, soundproof cage about to testify at yet another trial.
"This is murder, 100%" said Mohamed Soudan, a senior member of the Muslim Brotherhood's politicial party, the Freedom and Justice Party, who lives in Britain.
Egypt was once a great civilization. Now it's a mess with more than 40,000 political prisoners... some say 60,000.
Mona Eltahawy's commentary in the NY Times today says it all:
Mohamed Morsi Died in a Soundproof Cage:
What six years of deliberate and sustained cruelty tell us about el-Sisi's Egypt.
Here's how she describes the prison where Morsi was held:
At first, Mr. Morsi was held in a high-security prison near Alexandria, and then later in Tora prison in the notorious special wing nicknamed Scorpion Prison, which a former warden said in an interview “was designed so that those who go in don’t come out again unless dead. It was designed for political prisoners.”
See also:
LA Times article: https://www.latimes.com/world/la-fg-mohamed-morsi-egypt-courtroom-dies-20190617-story.html
NY Times article: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/17/world/middleeast/mohamed-morsi-dead.html?searchResultPosition=2
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