[The arrests appeared to
be part of a broadening crackdown on Mr. Morsi and his political allies that
included the arrests of dozens of Muslim Brotherhood members. Al Ahram, the
English-language Web site of the state newspaper, said those taken into custody
included Saad El-Katatni, leader of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and
Justice Party, and Rashad Bayoumi, the deputy head of the Islamist movement.]
By David D. Kirkpatrick and Alan Cowell
 |
European Pressphoto Agency
Adli Mansour,
center, spoke on Thursday during his swearing-in ceremony as
Egypt's interim
president.
|
CAIRO — A senior jurist was
sworn in as Egypt’s acting head of state on Thursday as the military escalated what
appeared to be a widespread roundup of the top Islamist aides to Mohamed Morsi,
the country’s first democratically elected president, who was ousted and placed
under house arrest the day before.
In a ceremony broadcast
live on state television, the chief justice of the Supreme Constitutional
Court, Adli Mansour, took the oath as the country’s temporary president,
praising the protesters whose mass demonstrations spurred the Egyptian military
to depose Mr. Morsi on Wednesday, suspend the Constitution and install an
interim government. Mr. Mansour said the actions in Egypt had “corrected the
path of its glorious revolution.”
Both Mr. Mansour and the
National Salvation Front alliance of liberal and leftist parties that pushed
for Mr. Morsi’s ouster offered an olive branch to his Islamist supporters in
the Muslim Brotherhood, saying that the group was part of the spectrum of
Egyptian society and should participate in an inclusive political process.
But the Muslim
Brotherhood, which had long been banned in Egypt until the 2011 Arab Spring
revolution and quickly shot to power under Mr. Morsi, appeared to rule out any
reconciliation, arguing that the military intervention was a coup that
overthrew Egypt’s legitimate leader.
“We reject participation
in any work with the usurper authorities,” Sheik Abdel Rahman al-Barr, an
executive board member of the organization, said in a statement on the group’s
Web site, which also exhorted members to “show self restraint and stay
peaceful.”
At the same time, the
public prosecutor on Thursday ordered the arrest of the Supreme Guide of the
Muslim Brotherhood, Mohamed Badie, and his influential deputy, Khairat
el-Shater, on charges of incitement to kill demonstrators. Egyptian media said
Mr. Badie was taken into custody later Thursday.
The flagship state
newspaper Al Ahram said the two Islamist leaders were suspected of a role in
the deaths of eight protesters, six by gunshots, while a mob was attacking and
burning the Muslim Brotherhood’s headquarters earlier this week.
The arrests appeared to
be part of a broadening crackdown on Mr. Morsi and his political allies that
included the arrests of dozens of Muslim Brotherhood members. Al Ahram, the
English-language Web site of the state newspaper, said those taken into custody
included Saad El-Katatni, leader of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and
Justice Party, and Rashad Bayoumi, the deputy head of the Islamist movement.
Shortly before Mr.
Mansour was sworn in, the skies over the capital, Cairo, filled with military
jets in a series of flybys, news reports said. The state-run MENA news agency
had reported that the flights were meant to “celebrate the triumph of popular
will.”
Tahrir Square, where
tens of thousands of opponents of the government had gathered each night since
Sunday to demand Mr. Morsi’s removal, erupted in fireworks and jubilation on
Wednesday night at news of the ouster, but by Thursday the city was reported
calm.
At a square near the
presidential palace where Mr. Morsi’s Islamist supporters had gathered, men
broke into tears and vowed to stay until he was reinstated or they were
forcibly removed. “The dogs have done it and made a coup against us,” they
chanted on Wednesday. “Dying for the sake of God is more sublime than
anything,” a speaker declared.
Military vehicles and
soldiers in riot gear had surrounded the pro-Morsi rally in the hours before
the takeover, and tensions escalated through the night. Within hours, at least
seven people had died and more than 300 were injured in clashes in 17 provinces
between Mr. Morsi’s supporters and either civilian opponents or security
forces.
Just before he was taken
into custody, Mr. Morsi rejected the generals’ actions as a “complete military
coup.” By the end of Wednesday night, Mr. Morsi, under house arrest, was
blocked from all communications, one of his advisers said.
For Mr. Morsi, it was a
bitter and ignominious end to a tumultuous year of bruising political battles
that ultimately alienated millions of Egyptians. Having won a narrow victory,
his critics say, he broke his promises of an inclusive government and
repeatedly demonized his opposition as traitors. With the economy crumbling,
and with shortages of electricity and fuel, anger at the government mounted.
The generals built their
case for intervention in a carefully orchestrated series of maneuvers, calling
their actions an effort at a “national reconciliation” and refusing to call
their takeover a coup. At a televised news conference late on Wednesday night,
Gen. Abdul-Fattah el-Sisi said that the military had no interest in politics
and was ousting Mr. Morsi because he had failed to fulfill “the hope for a
national consensus.”
The general stood on a
broad stage, flanked by Egypt’s top Muslim and Christian clerics as well as a
spectrum of political leaders including Mohamed ElBaradei, the Nobel
Prize-winning diplomat and liberal icon, and Galal Morra, a prominent Islamist
ultraconservative, or Salafi, all of whom endorsed the takeover.
Despite their
protestations, the move plunged the generals back to the center of political
power for the second time in less than three years, after their ouster of
President Hosni Mubarak in 2011. Their return threatened to cast a long shadow
over future efforts to fulfill that revolution’s promise of a credible,
civilian democracy. But General Sisi sought to present a very different image
from the anonymous, numbered communiqués from the Supreme Council of the Armed
Forces that were solemnly read over state television to announce Mr. Mubarak’s
exit, and the general emphasized that the military had no desire to rule.
“The armed forces was
the one to first announce that it is out of politics,” General Sisi said at the
start. “It still is, and it will remain away from politics.”
At the White House,
President Obama urged the military to move quickly to return Egypt to a
democratically elected government, saying, “We are deeply concerned by the
decision of the Egyptian Armed Forces to remove President Morsi and suspend the
Egyptian Constitution.” The president notably did not refer to the military’s
takeover as a coup — a phrase that would have implications for the $1.3 billion
a year in American military aid to Egypt.
David D. Kirkpatrick reported from Cairo and
Alan Cowell from London. Reporting was contributed by Kareem Fahim, Mayy El
Sheikh and Ben Hubbard from Cairo; Mark Landler from Washington; and Rick
Gladstone and Mona El-Naggar from New York.
