Muslim Brotherhood Statement on Junta Interior Minister Press Conference

In the name of God, Most Gracious, Most Merciful

The junta’s Interior Minister is determined to continue the fascist putschists’ vile outpouring of lies in an attempt to take the illegitimate ministry out of its current crisis, after declaring the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist group. In his recent presser, he claimed that "a youth whose father is a Muslim Brotherhood leader had been surveilling Dakahlia’s Security Directorate building before it was blown up" – somehow making the Brotherhood a terrorist group.

To disprove this claim, we say: The putschists announced their accusation of the group immediately after the bombing, before any investigation was even started. Then, they issued a supposedly judicial ruling and carried it out immediately. And only then, they started looking for evidence. Thus they came up with that youth’s Brotherhood leader story. However, this man stressed that he was never a member of the Muslim Brotherhood at any time.

Meanwhile, the Muslim Brotherhood in Dakahlia issued a statement in which they emphasized they do not know that person, and never had any affiliation of any kind with him. Although the coup ministry’s claims are highly questionable, and have been strongly denied by the youth’s family, if for the sake of argument we assume that the ministry is telling the truth about that youth, what exactly is his father’s crime? According to the law, a crime (and its punishment) is a personal matter.

The junta’s minister announced that this youth is affiliated with a militant group called Ansar Beit Al-Maqdis (Supporters of Jerusalem), one of the armed militant groups in the Sinai Peninsula. It is known, as confirmed by Palestinian thinker Azmi Bishara, that this group is an ideological opponent of the Muslim Brotherhood, and that it has already pronounced President Mohamed Morsi an infidel. So, how can the Muslim Brotherhood be responsible for the actions of their opponents, if indeed that group was responsible for the police HQ blast?

Moreover, the illegitimate minister of transitional justice came out to explain the military-installed government’s decision to place the Muslim Brotherhood on the so-called terrorism list. He said: "What the ministry issued was a statement, not a ruling. We issued that because some of the Brotherhood’s leaders are to face charges of violence and terrorism. We will not go back on this statement".

These words do not mean anything. They have absolutely nothing to do with the law or justice. If a police officer writes a memo accusing a citizen of terrorism, can this be used as a pretext to quickly disband and designate as terrorist a group whose membership is in millions, and its history extends back almost a century?

In any case, it is not unusual for the junta’s Interior Minister to lie. Earlier, during the violent break-up of the Rabaa Square sit-in, he claimed they "observed international standards in the crackdown on the peaceful protest camps", and that when they told people to disperse, they were attacked with intensive barrages of gunfire from the protesters. Evidently, all witnesses saw protesters were unarmed; there were no weapons in the entire sit-in site.

More recently, the minister also said that the police did not kill the engineering student Mohamed Reda. He said: "Our hands would be cut off before we shoot students"! A committee of human rights law professors investigated the incident, and issued a report that detailed testimonies by forty eyewitness students who unanimously affirmed that the police killed their colleague. Moreover, protesting students are falling, right now, killed in Al-Azhar University, on campus, classrooms and university dormitories. Who is killing them so callously?

Photographs and videos of the junta’s police killing students fill websites all over the internet as well as all satellite TV channels. Those pictures and other media also show how coup security forces assault, arrest and lynch female students, dragging them with inhuman brutality on the ground. All this is a real shame on all officials, officers and soldiers involved in these attacks, in the coup itself and in the illegitimate government.

Prophet Mohamed, peace be upon him, further said: "… and lying leads to immorality and wickedness, which lead to Hell-fire – a person may persist in lying until he is recorded as a liar before God."

The Muslim Brotherhood

Cairo: January 4, 2014