Morsi: two years since his death, there have been no investigations, no justice

Two years since Egypt’s first democratically-elected President, Mohamed Morsi, died in prison, no investigations have been held to determine the cause of death, and nobody has been prosecuted. Morsi collapsed on 17 June 2019 while in an enclosed glass cage in court. He was dead before paramedics could reach him.

The Muslim Brotherhood, human rights groups, and his family all accuse the Egyptian regime of killing the former president. They cite the harsh conditions in prison and allege deliberate medical negligence.

According to Agnes Callamard, the UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial killings, the “brutal” detention conditions “could amount to a State-sanctioned arbitrary killing.” In March 2017, a British parliamentary committee said that Morsi was detained in conditions that met neither Egyptian nor international standards. Indeed, after he was ousted and detained on 13 July 2013, Morsi complained several times to the judges at his trial about attempts to kill him while in solitary confinement.

Despite all of this, the Egyptian authorities have closed the file and claimed that Morsi’s death was “natural”.

The Chairman of the External Relations Committee for the Egyptian Freedom and Justice Party, Mohammad Sudan, believes that there is international complicity with the Egyptian authorities to block the prosecution of the killers. He said that the Egyptian judiciary has refused to reveal the cause of Morsi’s death. “Surely, this is a political decision backed by an international alliance,” he alleged, pointing out that Morsi could have been killed due to his rejection of what became known as the “deal of the century” as a “solution” to the Palestine-Israel issue.

Sudan said that an international alliance worked to remove Morsi from the presidency and that after his detention there were attempts on his life because keeping him alive in prison worried the regime in Cairo.

“The issue of the murder of Dr Mohamad Morsi faces an official blackout by the Egyptian regime,” Egyptian rights activist Khalaf Bayoumi told Arab21.com. “No party is to be allowed to take active steps towards prosecuting the murderers.”

READ: Egypt detains another minister from Morsi’s cabinet

Senior Muslim Brotherhood official Dr Ashraf Abdul-Ghaffar told the same media outlet that there are certain parties in London who pledged to file lawsuits in European and international courts, but nothing happened. He added that several massacres accompanied Morsi’s removal and his death, such as that committed in Rabaa Al-Adawiya Square in August 2013, that could shake the ruling regime in Egypt just when lawsuits are filed in international courts. One lawyer, he added, told him that international ignorance on the matter is “intentional”.

Morsi’s son Usama has been detained in Egypt since 2016. His youngest son Abdullah was also detained and died suddenly in prison on 14 September 2019. It is believed that he too was killed.

Rights activists believe that the reason why Morsi’s death is not being investigated is a political issue and part of an international conspiracy against the Muslim Brotherhood.