Leaked Audio Shows Egypt's Coup Leaders as a Criminal Syndicate
Source: al jazeera and opednews
The Watergate scandal in the early 1970s exposed Richard Nixon and his inner circle as conspirators who were trying to cover up their criminal involvement in spying against their political opponents. Once it was uncovered, Nixon had to resign the presidency in disgrace, as many of his assistants and senior government officials were convicted and served many years in prison. A majority in Congress at the time, including Republican members, condemned the former president and voted to impeach him. The American public was shocked to witness the level of corruption reaching the highest echelons of their government. Had it not been for the audiotapes that were released by order of the Supreme Court, the extent of Nixon's lawlessness and lies would never have been revealed or believed.
Now a series of audiotapes involving Egypt's top military brass, which ousted former President Mohammad Morsi in a military coup in July 2013, were publicly leaked this week. The pro-Muslim Brotherhood satellite channel Mukameleen (Arabic for "We'll Continue" released the six audio recordings (see links 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6) in a special nightly program on December 4. Shortly thereafter, the recordings went viral on Arabic-language websites, though most foreign language media outlets have yet to cover them.
The contents of the audio recordings (31 minutes in total) are shocking, as they involve the highest-ranking military rulers in Egypt, including coup leader Gen. Abdelfattah Sisi, conspiring together, falsifying evidence, forging documents, and admitting to criminal behavior on tape, while acknowledging that the legal case concocted against Morsi was in danger of collapsing. The question of who released the recordings is still a mystery but rumors abound.
The program presenter at the satellite channel Mukameleen insinuated that the leak came from a source within Sisi's inner circle that is sympathetic to the Muslim Brotherhood and the January 25 revolution. Haitham Abu Khalil, a prominent human rights advocate, tweeted that since the recordings came from within the Defense Ministry, the leaker must be a rival to Gen. Sisi, such as former Chief of Staff Sami Anan who declared his presidential candidacy last spring only to be sidelined by Sisi and ridiculed by his propaganda machine. Meanwhile, opposition leader Ayman Noor told Al Jazeera from his home in exile in Lebanon that the tapes are authentic because he has known the players and could easily identify their voices.
The individuals heard on the recordings comprise some of the major figures who were involved in the military coup and have ruled the country ever since. They include Gen. Mamdouh Shahin, legal advisor to Sisi, Gen. Abbas Kamel, Sisi's chief aide and office manager, Gen. Mohammad Ibrahim, the interior minister, Gen. Osama El-Gindy, chief of naval forces, and Gen. Mahmoud Hegazi, head of military intelligence, who was later promoted to army chief of staff. The recording also featured Gen. Sisi himself, who was the defense minister at the time before being elected president last May in a vote that was considered by many neutral observers and monitors to be a sham election. In the tapes, Gen. Shahin also described the conspiratorial role of the chief General Prosecutor, Hisham Barakat (who was appointed to the post by the coup leaders) and several of his senior prosecutors including Mustafa Khater and Ibrahim Saleh who have been leading the prosecution teams against Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood leadership.
Conspiracy in Action
It's not clear when the recordings were made but they probably occurred sometime last spring when Morsi's defense team challenged the basis for his initial incarceration and petitioned the presiding judges to dismiss all charges against him under the pretext that he was kidnapped by the military with no criminal charges until months later. According to Egyptian law, if the defense team was able to prove that Morsi was illegally detained, he would have to be released, after which he would have most certainly declared that he was the legitimately-elected president by millions of Egyptians.
During the first minute of the recording, Gen. Shahin is heard telling Sisi's office manager, Gen. Kamel, that General Prosecutor Barakat was in panic mode and had sent him his three leading prosecutors (including Khater and Saleh) and asked him to "fix" his problem. During an earlier court session, government prosecutors falsely told the judges that Morsi was never kidnapped and had always been in the custody of the interior ministry, even though he was actually being held in a military barracks at Abu Qir naval base near Alexandria. Shahin then told Kamel that they needed to provide the prosecutors with "an order of arrest of Morsi signed by interior minister Gen. Ibrahim that must be backdated to the day of the coup." Shahin then called Ibrahim (min. 2-3) and asked for the forged legal document to be signed by the interior minister. He also asked Ibrahim to make sure that the order was "printed in the official government records" so the order would appear legitimate, adding "as we used to do so during the days of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces" -- when SCAF issued backdated laws during the military rule in the aftermath of Mubarak's ouster. On tape Ibrahim is heard readily agreeing, and requesting that Shahin provide him with details to be included in the order including, the address and description of the detention facility.
Shahin and Kamel then called Gen. El-Gindy, the chief of the naval forces, who commanded the naval base where Morsi was detained for several weeks before he was officially charged and transferred to an interior ministry prison. In the next few minutes (starting at min. 5) Shahin tried to convince Gen. El-Gindy to turn over one of his buildings in the base to the interior ministry to be used as a prison for a month until Morsi's trial ended. When El-Gindy asked why they could not use an existing prison facility and claim that it was the facility used for Morsi's initial incarceration, Shahin said that this would not work because there was an official report on record written by investigative judge Hasan Samir that gave a detailed description of Morsi's detention facility that would not match any existing prison under the control of the interior ministry. In one instance Shahin warns (min. 9-11) that unless the prosecutors win this issue in court "the espionage charges and the Ittihadiyya (presidential palace) murder case (against Morsi) would collapse." Shahin then stated that they would have to plan for the worst-case scenario, as he was certain that the defense team would request physical inspection of the detention facility that the judges may actually grant. In this case, the detention facility must be part of the prison system under the interior ministry and match what was already on the record. However, Gen. El-Gindy expressed skepticism, as he could not transform any existing building in the naval base to become a stand-alone prison and turned over to the interior ministry. Yet, he promised to look into the matter.
In the next audio recording Gens. Shahin and Kamel called military intelligence chief Gen. Hegazi (min. 13) to seek his support in getting Gen. El-Gindy to cooperate. In frustration, Hegazi complained that the military does not get adequate legal counsel and that's why the military is now "collecting corpses" on the streets. Surprisingly, Shahin who is Sisi's legal advisor, answered "there is no one here (i.e. in the military) whose specialty is the law in order to provide legal advice." He further stated that interior minister Ibrahim has already agreed to sign the order and backdate it in order to "give the prosecutors the documents they need." Hegazi then suggested that they build a "hanger" on the naval base "which the (army's) engineering department could do in 72 hours". He added "They could build a separate gate, fence it, put a sign on it and turn it over to the interior ministry as a prison facility." Shahin was then delighted since the prosecutors told him that, "they had 15 days to finish the task."
Read more: http://www.opednews.com/articles/Leaked-Audio-Shows-Egypt-s-by-Esam-Al-Amin-Abdul-fattah-El-sisi_CRIMINAL-CONSPIRACY_Egypt_Egypt-Elections-141205-877.html
Between the criminal sisi and the criminals of isis arab spring has been demolished. Both sisi and isis were financed by UAE/Saudis.
Dirty murderous politics.
Comrade Grumpy
(13,184 posts)AverageJoe90
(10,745 posts)And guess why? Look at where the allegations came from.....Sympathizers of none other than the fascist/Islamist Muslim Brotherhood, themselves a criminal syndicate. And I find that, if anything, it's not Sisi that's the Nixon analogue.....but that would be none other than Mr. Morsi, although that might be too generous to this dirtbag; perhaps more accurately, he was Egypt's Mussolini, or at least wanted to be.
General Sisi may not be the most honest player in this game, but he is assuredly not the worst. And perhaps, not even Mr. Morsi.....
Comrade Grumpy
(13,184 posts)They (more or less) played the game by democratic rules. Egypt's "liberals" made a fatal error by seeking to overthrow the Morsi government and begging the military to do it for them. Now, the liberals can join the Brothers in Sisi's jails.
You have a funny definition of fascist; almost inverted, I would say. Is the fascist the guy who led a popular, religion-based, conservative political party to electoral victory or is it the freaking army general who led an anti-democratic coup, gunned down a thousand people in the street in a day, rigged the judicial system (Okay, it was already rigged), instituted toughh press censorship, destroyed the homes of 10,000 people in the Sinai, held mass "trials" handing out death sentences by the hundreds while making sure the old dictator, Mubarek, walks free?
AverageJoe90
(10,745 posts)Didn't stop him from instituting a fascist regime, however, and Morsi was on his way to doing the same.
Comrade Grumpy
(13,184 posts)Under Morsi:
The Egyptian military was controlled by the old deep state.
The Egyptian police were controlled by the old deep state.
The Egyptian judiciary was controlled by the old deep state.
Kind of hard to build a fascist state when the real fascists oppose you.
Now we have a situation where Mubarek goes free, while Muslim Brotherhood members get death sentences en masse in kangaroo trials. That's the ones who weren't gunned down in the street by the hundreds in military massacres.
And where are Egypt's "liberals," the ones who didn't want to play the democratic game and begged the military for a coup? Oh, they're in jail now, along with the Brotherhood guys.
Long live pharaoh.
Fred Sanders
(23,946 posts)elected governments? It is naked hypocrisy from America that gets very noticed in those countries with a non-homogenous mass media.
The message from Uncle Sam is we love democracy as long as the folks vote the right folks in.
JCMach1
(27,559 posts)AverageJoe90
(10,745 posts)At least until very recently, if some sources are accurate.....
Bob Dreyfuss over at the Nation did a really good piece on this, just this March:
http://www.thenation.com/blog/168871/saudi-arabia-and-brotherhood-what-new-york-times-missed
And if this is indeed true, this would be highly surprising, given the long history of cooperation between Riyadh and the MB.
bemildred
(90,061 posts)JCMach1
(27,559 posts)bemildred
(90,061 posts)Religion is the King's racket, he doesn't like other racketeers encroaching on his turf.
JCMach1
(27,559 posts)And Abu Dhabi they almost broke diplomatic relations with Doha over continued support of Muslim Brotherhood by Qatar...
The latest diplomatic spat pits Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Bahrain against Qatar over its support for the Muslim Brotherhood, a group labeled a "terrorist organisation" by Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
On March 5, the trio announced the withdrawal of their ambassadors from Qatar, accusing it of breaching the organisation's security agreement and violating its principles of "unified destiny", according to a joint statement issued by the official Saudi news agency.
AverageJoe90
(10,745 posts)Although, I honestly can't help but wonder how much of a role the Obama Administration may have played in the sudden turnaround.....did our President do a little arm-twisting, perhaps?
Android3.14
(5,402 posts)Just kinda weird.
bemildred
(90,061 posts)geek tragedy
(68,868 posts)some of their lesser crimes
AverageJoe90
(10,745 posts)It is indeed unfortunate that this all happened, in a sense, but I have no illusions; Morsi was already well on his way to becoming a North African Mussolini......the Muslim Brotherhood are BAD news, no doubt about it. Just look at what their offshoot Hamas has been up to this past 30 years or so.
bemildred
(90,061 posts)And he is going to be much harder to remove.
AverageJoe90
(10,745 posts)If anyone really lost, it was the leftist liberals; it does seem that the military took advantage of them after all, even though Morsi's party DID commit some serious fraud in the 2012 elections over there. But there's also no doubt in my mind that al-Sisi is *definitely* the lesser of the two evils by far.
bemildred
(90,061 posts)Last edited Sat Dec 6, 2014, 10:25 PM - Edit history (1)
You enjoy your fantasy while it lasts.
rafeh1
(385 posts)elected govts even mb allied ones can be removed as happened in Tunisia where the pro mb govt lost to a group of lefties.
Unelected dictators are there for life as Mubarak has shown.
The Saudis and UAE financed both Sisi and isis. Between the two of them the arab spring has been destroyed. And the arab kings can rest easy for another generation. The saudis and uae suckered the left democrats in egypt into either backing the military or at least being passive about the coup. And the left democrats fell for this ploy.