Muslim Brotherhood protesters defy threats with Eid protests

Supporters of ousted Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi demonstrate in Alexandria on Friday Dozens of Muslim Brotherhood supporters in Egypt joined marches after Friday Prayers headed towards the sit-ins at Rabaa al-Adawiya and Nahda Square in Cairo. Pro-Morsi protesters set up the two protest camps in Cairo days before the overthrow of former president Mohamme Morsi on July 3 in a popularly backed military coup.
 They insist they will disperse only when Morsi, who ruled for just a year after the first democratic presidential election in the Arab world's most populous nation, is reinstated.
 Members of the Islamist group, which dominated Morsi’s government, announced on Friday it had organised marches from over 28 mosques going to the two sit-ins.  
 Egyptian imam Safwat Hegazi said Morsi's supporters would continue their protest until returning the former president was returned to the power, adding that calls for the sit-ins to disperse only made demonstrators more determined to stay until legitimacy restored.
 But young activists Egypt's National Salvation Front (NSF) accused Muslim Brotherhood leaders of trying to convince their supporters the former president had a chance return of returning to power, while their worked to strengthen their own position for any future negotiations.
 NSF member Mohamed Abdelal told Arab Today that Friday's marches were aimed at strengthening the Muslim Brotherhood’s negotiating hand, rather than winning Morsi’s return.
 The anti-coup National Coalition to Support Legitimacy called on pro-Morsi demonstrators to stay in the streets over the weekend.
 Friday’s rallies come as Egypt’s interim president Adly Mansour suggested a crackdown on their protest camps was imminent.
 The government had said it held off from breaking up the protest camps in Cairo out of respect for the holy month of Ramadan, which ended on Wednesday night, and to give foreign mediators a chance to end the deadlock peacefully.
 But prime minister Hazem al-Beblawi warned late on Thursday "that the situation is approaching the moment we would rather avoid".
 "The government wants to give the protesters, especially the reasonable ones among them, a chance to reconcile and heed the voice of reason," he said in a television interview quoted in a cabinet statement.
 Beblawi's comments on Thursday were the latest warning from the army-installed government of a crackdown on the protest camps.
 However, the protesters remain defiant, even after more than 100 people, mostly Morsi loyalists, were killed in previous confrontations with police and soldiers.
 "The Egyptian people are continuing, and the days will only increase their determination to persist in their peaceful struggle until the country returns to the democratic path, until the coup is completely ended," the anti-coup, pro-legitimacy alliance said in a statement on Friday.
 Meanwhile Morsi’s wife told thousands of his supporters that her husband “is coming back, God willing.”
 Naglaa Mahmoud’s first appearance since July 3 seemed aimed at galvanizing support after the group fell from power after just one year of Morsi’s rule.
 Wearing a flowing veil that covered most of her body, Mahmoud spoke to the crowds gathered at a sit-in at Rabaa al-Adawiya mosque in Cairo’s Nasr City suburb. She recited a verse from the Quran before delivering what she described as “good news,” saying Egypt “is Islamic.”
 “We are victorious,” Mahmoud told the crowd, saying protesters would overcome.
 Initially, the Egyptian press suggested that Mahmoud was held with her husband in undisclosed location along with one of her children. Demonstrators at Nasr City cheered her arrival to the makeshift stage. She did not say where she had been since the coup.
 Morsi is held with his top aides, a number of whom have been transferred over the past days to a prison in southern Cairo. They face charges including instigating violence in various incidents that led to deadly street clashes over Morsi’s rule.


 Additional source: AFP