Local papers publish evidence in Morsi case

Prosecutor General Hesham Barakat has been requested to tighten security measures around the prison escape case in which ousted President Mohamed Morsi and a number of other Muslim Brotherhood leaders are accused, the privately-owned Al-Masry Al-Youm newspaper reported on Monday. 

The sources who made the request, described by the newspaper as “sovereign sources,” said the evidence is at risk of sabotage, including alleged recorded phone calls between Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas leaders.

Over 100 defendants are charged in the case, including members of the Gaza-ruling Hamas group and the Lebanon-based Hezbollah group. 

On Saturday, Investigative Judge Hassan Samir referred Morsi and other Brotherhood leaders to the Cairo Criminal Court on charges of killing and attempting to kill police officers, storming and looting prisons, and aiding the escape of prisoners during the January 25 revolution in 2011. 

The evidence, cited by Al-Masry Al-Youm’s sources, apparently includes recordings of phone calls between Hamas and the Brotherhood, in which Hamas leaders tell of the whereabouts of their members in Egyptian prisons, prior to the January 25 revolution. The recordings were ordered by the State Security Prosecution, according to the newspaper. Video footage is also reportedly among the evidence, and is said to show Hamas members with Brotherhood members during the Marg Prison escape. 

The evidence received by Al-Masry Al-Youm also includes testimonies from policemen. In a sample testimony published by the newspaper, a policeman reportedly said he was working in the Wadi al-Natroun Prison when Morsi and other Brotherhood leaders were transferred there. He said that Hamdy Hassan, a Brotherhood inmate, told him the group was bracing to destroy the security apparatus and start a new government. 

The policeman said people residing near the prison saw the attack, in which four-wheel drives surrounded the prison and pointed machine guns at it. The attack, according to the policeman, took place in the early hours of January 29 in 2011.

Further investigations into the case were published by the privately owned Al-Shorouk. These concerned largely ambiguous details about meetings between Cairo-based Muslim Brotherhood leaders and members of the international Muslim Brotherhood organization in Istanbul. 

Al-Shorouk also published details about recorded meetings at the Brotherhood’s Guidance Bureau prior to January 28, where leaders tasked a number of members with breaking into prisons to liberate fellow members in collaboration with Hamas and Hezbollah. 

The paper also published an account of infiltrators heading from Sinai to Cairo, where they were said to divide into three groups to break into three main prisons: Abu Zaabal, Marg and Wadi al-Natroun. 

The Hamas leadership have vehemently denied allegations of plotting to liberate prisoners from Egyptian jails in the wake of the January 25 revolution. 

In an interview with the privately owned Al-Watan daily last week, Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Zahar denied any Hamas presence in Egypt, saying that most Palestinian militants in the country are outlaws who do not belong to Hamas.