Anti-coup alliance denies giving up on the return of Morsi

Hamza Mohamed, a spokesperson for the National Alliance to Support Legitimacy, told Mada Masr on Wednesday that allegations by the Brothers Without Violence movement, who claimed that talks were held between them and the alliance, are false.

Brothers Without Violence, a group founded following the removal of Morsi and one that claims that it champions non-violent Islamic movements, released a statement on Wednesday announcing that it had met with junior leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood and leading figures in the National Alliance to Support Legitimacy and reached a number of resolutions.

Most notably, the group announced that the National Alliance had agreed to give up on the demand of Morsi’s return, in exchange for other demands.

State-run Al-Ahram newspaper picked up the statement, headlining the news, “The Muslim Brotherhood abandon Morsi."

However, Mohamed told Mada Masr that the alliance has not had any meetings with Brothers Without Violence.

“This is 100 percent fabricated. There were no negotiations with this group and we are unaware of its origins,” Mohamed said, affirming that the National Alliance has not changed its original demands, at the top of which is Morsi's return.

In its statement released on Wednesday, Brothers Without Violence said that the meeting resulted in the drafting of new demands.

The new demands included stopping the security campaign against the Muslim Brotherhood, releasing Morsi and other leading figures of his regime, removing the ban imposed on the group and its assets by a court order, and allowing the group back in the political scene, granting its members four ministries. Other demands involve reopening all the closed Islamic television stations and stopping the media campaign against the Brotherhood.

“We decided that the current situation will lead all those who belong to political Islam into a spiral of violence and we agreed not to hold onto one person, sacrificing many others. We said that holding onto Mohamed Morsi would lead everyone in the Alliance to Support Legitimacy into a dark tunnel,” said Hussein Abdel Rahman, the spokesperson for Brothers Without Violence, in a phone interview with Mada Masr.

Although the statement released by the group says that the meeting was attended by members of the National Alliance, Abdel Rahman told Mada Masr that it was actually attended by supporters of the alliance, such as the Islamic parties Amal, Watan and Raya.

The group called itself a “mediator," requesting the government to take up this agreement, and offering to mediate between them and the Muslim Brotherhood to end the current bloodshed.

The group also asserted that it had the power to negotiate with Ansar Beit al-Maqdes, a militant group based in Sinai, which most recently claimed responsibility for the bombing of police headquarters in Mansoura on Tuesday, and to stop all violence and allow the draft constitution to pass.