Jordan on the brink: Muslim Brothers mobilize for King Abdullah’s overthrow

DEBKAfile Exclusive Report

Jordan’s Muslim Brotherhood has given King Abdullah II notice that he has until October to bow to their demand to transform the Hashemite Kingdom into a constitutional monarchy or face Arab Spring street pressure for his abdication.

 debkafile’s Middle East sources report that Israeli and Saudi intelligence watchers are becoming increasingly concerned about the approaching climax of the conflict in Amman between Islamists and the throne .

For Israel, an upheaval in Jordan bodes the tightening of the Islamist noose around its borders – Egypt and Libya to the south and Syria to the north, with unpredictable consequences with regard to Jordan’s Palestinian population.

Saudi Arabia, already threatened by Iranian aggression, fears the oil kingdom may be next in line if its northern neighbor is crushed under the marching feet of the “Arab Spring.”

The oil kingdom’s royal rulers are reported to have belatedly woken up to the peril and are in a panic. They realize that their preoccupation with helping Syrian rebels overthrow Bashar Assad misdirected their attention from the enemies lurking at their own door. Thousands of articles in the Arab press in the past year have predicted that after the Muslim Brotherhood seizes power in Damascus, Amman would be next in its sights followed by Riyadh.

The latest DEBKA-Net-Weekly of Sept. 21 analyzed the plight closing in on the Jordanian monarch and outlined three of his options:

1.  He could bow to the main Muslim Brotherhood’s demand by submitting to the kingdom’s transition to a constitutional monarchy and the transfer of executive power to an MB-led government by means of the electoral reforms for which the Brothers have been pushing for years. In Jordan as in Egypt, the Brothers hope for a two-third majority in a free election.

2.  He could stand up to the Brotherhood’s demands and order his security, intelligence and military forces to crack down on the opposition. This course carries the risk of plunging Jordan into the carnage of civil war among the diverse segments of the population. The biggest dangers come from the Bedouin tribes, whose traditional allegiance to the Hashemite throne has weakened in recent years, and the Palestinians who form 60 percent of the population.

3. He could seek to negotiate a compromise through various brokers. Our sources report that several attempts at mediation have been ventured of late, but got nowhere because the Muslim Brotherhood sent its most radical leaders to the table and they left very little margin for compromise.

According to sources at the royal court, Abdullah will very soon meet with MB leaders for a personal appeal for calm after years of heated debate. Most observers believe that he has left it too late and by now the Muslim Brotherhood has got the bit between its teeth.

Indeed, according to an internal memorandum leaked to the Al-Hayat newspaper, the MB has already set a date for mass demonstrations against the King to start on Oct. 10 and ordered its members to go to work at once to mobilize at least 50,000 demonstrators for daily protests against the king and the royal family until he bows to their will.

The memorandum states: “Every member must be dedicated to communicate with his relatives, close friends, acquaintances, fellow employees and various Islamic groups and patriots…” It calls for the formation of “hotbeds to… focus on the participation of groups affiliated with universities, schools and women’s organizations.” Protesters are also advised on tactics for overcoming a security crackdown.

Jordan’s Muslim Brotherhood has therefore moved forward from opposition propaganda, debating and political pressure to activism against the throne.

Both Jordanian camps are anxiously watching to see which way the wind blows in the White House.
President Barack Obama has a balancing act to resolve:  On the one hand, the Jordanian king has long been a staunch American ally and friend, its mainstay in many regional crises. On the other, Obama regards the Muslim Brotherhood as the linchpin of his external policy of outreach to the Muslim world.

'Brotherhood turning Middle East into Islamist bloc'

By BEN HARTMAN, YONI DAYAN

Dichter warns revolutions in could threaten Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Gulf states; Gilad: Hezbollah aiming 60-70 rockets at Israel.

The Middle East is on the path to becoming a single Islamist bloc run by the Muslim Brotherhood, Home Front Defense Minister and former Shin Bet chief Avi Dichter said Monday.

Speaking at the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism’s World Summit, Dichter said “the Arab world in general and in particular the countries neighboring us have begun a long journey that will end with the Middle East being a bloc run by the Muslim Brotherhood, and possibly a single Islamist bloc.”

He also spoke about the civil war raging in Syria, saying that it is a question of when and not if the Assad regime will fall, adding that a massacre of the Alawite sect should be expected in such a case.
Dichter added that of great importance will be whether or not the new regime will be a liberal, secular leadership, or another regime based on the Muslim Brotherhood model.

In addition, he asserted that if Iran attains nuclear weapons it can be expected that Egypt and Saudi Arabia will follow suit.

Closer to home, Hezbollah has between 60,000 and 70,000 rockets aimed at Israel, Defense Ministry policy director Amos Gilad said Monday, speaking at the same conference.

Gilad said the Lebanese terrorist organization has stockpiled rockets of various types, and its arsenal is far more robust than the one it had prior to the Second Lebanon War.

“The next war will be aimed against the home front,” Gilad warned.

Gilad also blamed Hezbollah for a number of successful and unsuccessful terrorist attacks abroad.
Though admitting that the threat from Lebanon is growing, Gilad was largely optimistic about Israel’s security situation, citing positive developments in Syria, Egypt and the Gaza Strip.

“In Syria, there is good news,” Gilad said. “The Golan Heights remains the quietest region in the entire Middle East. Our deterrence capabilities are sufficiently, for the time being, keeping out warring parties in Syria.”

Gilad also warned that alQaida is starting to rear its head in Syria, with a view that the fall of Assad will allow it to open a new terror front against Israel.

Turning to Egypt, Gilad said that though there are many terrorist groups actively trying to strike Israel from Sinai, recently elected President Mohamed Morsy and his officials remain committed to peace.

Gilad called the situation in Gaza “relatively restrained,” with Hamas generally holding other Palestinian terror groups back from striking Israel.

Gilad also said that Israel is not facing a conventional military threat, a massive improvement over Israel’s historical security situation.

Focusing on Iran, Professor Uzi Arad, former national security adviser to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and head of the National Security Council, spoke of the coming year as being critical to the future of the Islamic Republic’s nuclear question.

“The first half of 2013 is when things must take place. There must be determination on the part of the Americans to act,” Arad said, adding that Israel reserves the right to turn to its allies for help, but also has the obligation to do what is necessary and that “one way or another, the Iranian nuclear program will be stopped in 2013.”

Arad said that the issue of “red lines” regarding Iran must be worked on between the US and Iran, but not through a public debate via the media.

The Arab Spring was a common theme at the conference, largely for bringing what speakers portrayed as ongoing disarray and instability to the Middle East.

Eitan Ben-David, director of Israel’s Counterterrorism Bureau, said that as a result of the Arab Spring, Israel can expect increased terrorism directed at its military and civilians “with an emphasis on [terror from] Sinai.”

“The threat faced to Israeli citizens traveling in Sinai is severe, as well as the threat posed by global jihad, cyberterror and unconventional terror,” Ben-David added.

Nitzan Nuriel, former director of the Counterterrorism Bureau said, “Gaza and Sinai present an operational threat from Eilat to Kerem Shalom and the Gaza Envelope, and this is increasing.”

Nuriel described Sinai as awash in widely available, cheap firearms and advanced weaponry, and home to a large number of terrorists looking to strike Israel.

Nuriel added that the threat could justify Israel launching the type of security on the southern border that it has on the northern border against the Hezbollah threat.

At the same time, he sounded an optimistic tone, saying that in Gaza and Egypt, there is a government and address to which Israel can potentially reach.

Alongside the usual Iran and Arab Spring talk, a number of speakers described the dangers facing Israel closer to home, namely, the dangers posed by a failure to reach a diplomatic solution with the Palestinians.

Kadima leader Shaul Mofaz went as far as to say “the threat to Israel of a future bi-national state is greater than the Iran threat,” while former Shin Bet chief Ya’acov Peri said that if a breakthrough doesn’t happen with the Palestinians, Israel is on the way to a bi-national state.”

Iran can build an N-bomb by Oct. 1. Cairo coup hampers Israeli action

DEBKAfile Exclusive Report

At its present rate of enrichment, Iran will have 250 kilograms of 20-percent grade uranium, exactly enough to build its first nuclear bomb, in roughly six weeks, and two-to- four bombs by early 2013, debkafile’s military and intelligence sources report. Hence the leak by an unnamed Israeli security source Sunday, Aug. 12, disclosing Iran’s progress in developing the detonator and fuses for a nuclear warhead which can be fitted onto Shehab-3 ballistic missiles capable of reaching Israel.

Since 20 percent refined uranium is a short jump to weapons grade fuel, Iran will have the capability and materials for building an operational nuclear bomb by approximately October 1.

This knowledge is not news to US President Barack Obama, Saudi King Abdullah, Syrian ruler Bashar Assad, or Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu - and certainly not to Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.  Netanyahu’s comment at the opening of the weekly cabinet meeting Sunday: “All threats against the home front are dwarfed by one – Iran must not be allowed to have nuclear arms!” – was prompted by that deadline.

Ex-Prime Minister Ehud Olmert did not have that information when he “assured” Tel Aviv students Sunday, “Iran’s nuclear program has not reached the threshold necessitating Israeli action now or in the near future.” He further claimed that Israel’s “defense leaders” don’t subscribe to the view that “action now is unavoidable.” Olmert, who stepped down under a cloud of suspected corruption in 2009, has not since then had access to regular intelligence briefings on Iran. So either he spoke out of ignorance or willfully joined an opposition chorus of voices speaking out against Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak.

The fact is that when Olmert approved the Israeli strike for destroying a nuclear reactor under construction by Iran and North Korea in northern Syria in September 2007,  Iran was years away from accumulating enough enriched uranium and the capability to build nuclear warheads.
Both are now within Tehran’s grasp in weeks.

Leading an opposition campaign to bring down the incumbent government is legitimate. Discrediting belated Israeli action to pre-empt a nuclear Iran as fodder for that campaign is not.  If what Olmert and Barack (the same defense minister as today) did in 2007 was necessary then, action now for delaying Iran’s imminent “breakout” to a bomb is many times more necessary and far more urgent.
However Netanyahu and Barak have put themselves in a straitjacket by two lapses:

1.  By foot-dragging on their decision for two years, they have led their opponents at home and in Washington – and Khamenei’s office too – to believe that, by turning on the heat, they can hold Israel back from military action against Iran’s nuclear program until it is too late. The time has been used not just for Iranian nuclear progress, but to enlist ex-politicians and retired generals at home and add them to the voices, especially in the White House, which believe Israel can learn to live with a nuclear-armed Iran.

2.  Netanyahu and Barak have behaved as though a decision on Iran is in their exclusive province, insulated from the turmoil and change swirling through Israel’s Arab neighbors in the past two years.
But the Middle East has a way of catching up with and rushing past slow-moving politicians:
Sunday, at 10:00 a.m. Netanyahu warned his ministers that no threat was worse than a nuclear Iran. At 17:55 p.m., Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood President Mohamed Morsi dropped a bombshell in Cairo. In one fell swoop, he smashed the Egyptian military clique ruling the country for decades, sacked the Supreme Military Council running Egypt since March 2011 and cut the generals off from their business empire by appropriating the defense ministry and military industry.

That fateful eight hours-less-five-minutes have forced Israel’s leaders to take a second look at their plans for Iran.

Morsi’s lightning decisions were the finishing touches that proved the Islamist Bedouin terror attacks in Sinai of Aug. 5 fitted neatly into a secret master plan hatched by Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood to seize full control of rule in Cairo – a plan debkafile first revealed exclusively last Friday, Aug. 10.

Netanyahu now faces one of the hardest dilemmas of his political career - whether to go forward with the Iran operation, which calls for mustering all Israel’s military and defense capabilities – especially for the repercussions, after being suddenly confronted with unforeseen security challenges on its southwestern border, for thirty years a frontier of peace.

The exceptional talents of Netanyahu and Barak to put off strategic decisions until they are overtaken by events has landed Israel in an especially perilous plight, surrounded now by a soon-to-be nuclear-armed Iran from the east;  threatened Syrian chemical warfare from the north and the Muslim Brotherhood takeover of Egypt to its south.

Morsi's anti-terror ploy to root out pro-US influence in Cairo, cut Israel from Sinai

DEBKAfile Exclusive  

Israel willingly acceded to Cairo’s request for permission to deploy fighter planes and armored troop carriers in Sinai, which was ruled a demilitarized buffer zone under their 1979 peace treaty. It shared an interest in President Mohamed Morsi’s counter-terror offensive against lawless Islamist bands.

But when sensational reports started coming in from Cairo about non-existent Egyptian victories in which an improbable “60 gunmen killed,” they realized the “offensive” was largely bogus.

According to debkafile’s intelligence sources, Washington and Jerusalem strongly suspect that they should be worried about what the Muslim Brotherhood president is really up, especially after the sweep he conducted Wednesday, Aug. 8 of pro-Western military officers and other moves.

1.  Until then, President Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood’s leadership were deemed two separate and competing power bases in Cairo, with the president ready to defy the Brotherhood by leaning on the supreme military council for support.

This perception broke down in the aftermath of the terrorist raid of Aug. 5 in which 17 Egyptian troops were murdered at their Mansoura base in northern Sinai. By his subsequent actions, Morsi put paid to the impression, which was supported by many high-ranking members of Israel’s security community, that the Egyptian president of two months had chosen an independent path and was ready to break ranks with the Brotherhood.

2.  Wednesday, Aug. 8, with considerable fanfare, Morsi sacked key military officials in an apparent purge of those responsible for the Sinai debacle.

Chief of intelligence Gen. Mourad Mowafi was sent into retirement and Maj. Gen. Mohamed Shahata given an interim appointment in his stead. The same bulletin announced that the head of the Supreme Military Council and defense minister, Field Marshal Tantawi, had fired the head of the military police, Maj. Gen. Hamdy Badeen.

Our sources disclose that Tantawi had no part in this or any other military dismissals, although they were his prerogative. Morsi quite simply seized the moment to appropriate the top military command’s authority for the first time by taking upon himself the firing and hiring of military officers.

The president furthermore sacked the head of the Republican Guard, the division responsible for safeguarding the president and members of his regime and replaced him with an officer loyal to the Muslim Brotherhood, Maj. Gen. Hamed Zaky.

Morsi’s highhanded actions, especially in the case of Gen. Mowafi, are seen in Washington and Jerusalem as the first steps in the Brotherhood’s takeover of the Egyptian army.

3.  Mowafi had to go because he stood in the way of Muslim Brotherhood objectives. It was he who raised the alarm for months about an impending terrorist attack on the Egyptian-Gaza-Israel border junction and urged the deployment of attack helicopters for preemptive missile attacks on their networks.

Instead of being commended, our sources report he was fired for two reasons: For what the MB thought of as his pro-western and pro-Israeli orientation; and for his efforts to broker a compromise deal for unifying the two Palestinian wings, the Hamas rulers of the Gaza Strip and the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah.

However, this not what the Brotherhood wants. Rather than Palestinian unity and compromise, the MB seeks a Hamas takeover of the Ramallah-based Fatah wing headed by Mahmoud Abbas.
Gen. Mowafi stood in the way of this goal.

At the same time, the new man, Gen. Shahata, had to be satisfied with an interim appointment as head of intelligence. The MB does not trust him to be loyal and regards him as pro-Western – albeit less well-connected than Mowafi. They will use him as a stopgap until they find an intelligence chief who understands where his allegiance belongs - and then drop him too.

In the “counter-terror offensive” charade, the MB assigned Hamas in Gaza a key role. According to the script, Cairo would give Hamas an ‘ultimatum” to surrender the Al Qaeda-linked Army of Islam operatives alleged to have carried out the raid on the Egyptian base. The Muslim Brotherhood regime in Cairo would then be able to close the books on the episode and avoid even the semblance of an offensive against Salafi terrorist networks in Sinai.

Israel’s diplomatic-security cabinet meeting in Jerusalem Friday, Aug. 10, freely approved the transfer of assault helicopters to Sinai “for a few days”- although it didn’t take a counter-terror expert to realize that there is no way a couple of helicopters could wipe out hidden terrorist networks in just days. But the ministers decided on advice from Washington to go along for now with the show Morsi and the Muslim Brothers were putting on, so as not to look obstructive. 

Israel perturbed by Obama’s outreach to Mursi - against his word

DEBKAfile Exclusive Report

Israeli government and military leaders were taken aback by the news of US President Barack Obama’s invitation to the new Egyptian president Mohammed Mursi to visit Washington in September - in breach of the president's assurances to US Jewish leaders at the White House last month, debkafile’s exclusive Washington and Jerusalem sources report. His key assurance was that Mursi would not be invited to the White House and Obama would not maintain direct telephone contact with him until he met certain conditions, the foremost of which concerned a public and unambiguous commitment to Egypt’s 1979 peace treaty with Israel.

They American Jewish delegation was assured that President Mursi would be required to devote a section of his earliest speech on foreign affairs to the specific affirmation of his profound commitment to the peace pact with Israel. The unspecific pledge to uphold Cairo’s international accords he made upon his election on June 24 would not satisfy the US president, the American Jewish delegation was promised. Indeed the new Egyptian president would also be required to table the peace pact with Israel in the new Egyptian parliament for ratification.

With these assurances, the Jewish delegation was satisified.

However, it turned out Monday, July 8, that, instead of standing by his promises, President Obama had sent Deputy Secretary of State William Burns to Cairo for two days of interviews with Egyptian officials, in none of which did  future relations with Israel figure. President Mursi’s spokesman then announced that the US official had handed the new president an invitation to visit the White House in September. Neither Burns nor the White House contradicted him.

Furthermore, in a briefing to reporters after he saw Mursi, Burns vehemently denied that the peace pact had been discussed.

Next Saturday, July 14, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is due in Cairo after a visit to Israel.

To signal disapproval and concern over the impact on Israel’s security of Washington’s unconditional outreach to Muslim Brotherhood-ruled Cairo, Prime Minster Binyamin Netanyahu has ordered the speeding up of construction on the fortified fence on the Israel-Egyptian border, known for decades as “the peace border,” and completion of the expanded military deployment in the border region.

In Jerusalem, the Obama administration is seen as suddenly backtracking on the conditions set the incoming Egyptian president in the last week of June, which essentially made US support of his regime conditional on his performance in key fields:

Those conditions were first revealed by DEBKA-Net-Weekly:

1. Observance of a democratic agenda;

1. Respect for human rights, namely women’s’ status and minority rights, especially relating to the Christian Copts;

2.  The formation of a broad national unity government representing the country’s active mainstream parties - not just his own Muslim Brotherhood.

3.  Making the 1979 peace treaty between Egypt and Israel a central pillar of his foreign policy;

4.  Public affirmation of his commitment to uphold peace relations with Israel.

5.  A resolute effort to curb the terrorist elements running wild in Sinai and threatening Israeli security by restoring Egyptian control.

6.  An end to the rabid anti-American and anti-Western rhetoric pervading Egyptian media and the persecution of Western NGOs operating in Egypt.

The last three points give those demands the weight of an ultimatum:

7. Not until all the above steps are taken, will President Morsi be welcomed in Washington as an official guest.

8. Furthermore, not until the Egyptian president has satisfied Washington on all these scores will the Obama administration use its influence with the World Bank to ease Egypt’s dire liquidity problems and help find the cash to buy food on world markets. If Morsi can’t find the money to feed the population, hungry Egyptians will be out on the streets of their cities once again - clamoring this time for his and the Muslim Brotherhood’s removal.

Those conditions have mostly gone by the board along with President Obama’s promises, debkafile’s sources report.

Putin-Netanyahu talks to focus on rising Islamist power: Cairo then Damascus

DEBKAfile Exclusive Analysis

The Muslim Brotherhood’s rise to power in Egypt – and soon, possibly, in Syria - will have pushed to the sidelines such obvious topics as Iran and gas when Monday, June 25, Russian President Vladimir Putin on a short visit to Israel meets Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.

On this subject at least, the Russian and Israeli leaders will find common ground: Both are concerned, to put it mildly, by the chain of Muslim Brotherhood governments rolling out along Middle East shores – Libya, last year; Egypt, yesterday; and Syria, tomorrow. In their view, this process is a menace to regional stability which rivals even that of a nuclear-armed Iran.

Putin counts US President Barack Obama’s sponsorship of Muslim Brotherhood power as a strategic threat to Russian national security because of it could be the match which lights the flame of radical Islam in the Caucasus and among the Russian Muslim populations of the Volga River valleys.

As for Netanyahu, his calm-sounding congratulations for the new, democratically-elected Egyptian president, disguise trepidation. After one domino fell in Cairo, he fears another will fall in Damascus leaving Jordan vulnerable to having its king pushed over by the kingdom’s powerful Muslim Brotherhood.

Israel would then be under siege from three Islamist-ruled neighbors - “moderate” in Obama’s eyes, alarmingly “extremist and expansionist” in the view of Putin and Netanyahu.

In contrast to the Israeli prime minister, the Russian president makes no bones about his utter disapproval of the US President’s “pro-Islamic” policies. His blunt words in support of Syria’s Bashar Assad at the G20 in Mexico Sunday, June 18, were meant as a monkey wrench for US plans to continue to install Muslim power in Arab lands.

Not surprisingly, their conversation on the summit sidelines was described as “candid” – a euphemism for “difficult” – and must have raised a stop sign against the “reset” of ties heralded last year by Washington.

The Israeli Prime Minister keeps on smiling to Obama while grinding his teeth over the security avalanche set in motion at Israel’s front and back doors and wracking his brains for a plan of cooperation with Moscow to arrest the slide.

Israel has already had a foretaste of the trouble to come from Cairo. It bounced all the way from Libya’s Islamist regime to land this month with a sinister bang across Egyptian Sinai’s border with southern Israel.

In the past year, since a new regime took power in Tripoli, the strategic peninsula has been transformed into a major smuggling eden for the distribution of contraband arms and infiltrating Islamist terrorists, including Muslim Brotherhood adherents, into the Hamas-ruled the Gaza Strip and onward to other countries in the region.

For Putin the math is simple: If Libyan Islamists can travel 1,360 kilometers to reach Israel’s borders without anyone stopping them, why not 2,558 kilometers to the Russian Caucasian?

Ironically, the victim of the first suicide attack the Libyan terrorists mounted inside Israel from Sinai was an Israeli Muslim from Haifa, Said Fashasha, who died in a bombing-shooting ambush on Route 10 to Eilat Sunday, June 18. On the same day, the “candid” Obama-Putin conversation also took place at Los Cabos.

Now as then, President Obama continues to push the Russian leader to accept the compromise of Syria’s Vice President Farouk al-Sharaa, a Sunni Muslim, replacing Bashar Assad, with Assad’s brother-in-law, deputy chief of staff Gen. Shawqat Asif, serving alongside him. With those chips in place, Washington believes Assad might be persuaded to go into exile in Moscow.

What Putin hears is that Obama is so eager to have a Sunni Muslim installed in Damascus that he is willing to put up with retaining the Assad clan in power, even Gen. Asif, a chief instigator of the regime’s bloody savagery.

So both Putin and Netanyahu, when they talk in Jerusalem Monday, know they are stumped for a strategy to hold back the Islamist tide washing across this region and potentially farther afield – any more than a diplomatic solution has been found to stall Iran’s nuclear plans.

Jerusalem to become Egypt’s capital under Mursi’s rule, says Muslim cleric

If Muslim Brotherhood candidate Mohammed Mursi became president, Egypt’s new capital will no more be Cairo, but the new capital will be Jerusalem, a prominent Egyptian cleric said at a presidential campaign rally, which was aired by an Egyptian private TV channel.

“Our capital shall not be Cairo, Mecca or Medina. It shall be Jerusalem with God’s will. Our chants shall be: ‘millions of martyrs will march towards Jerusalem’,” prominent cleric Safwat Hagazy said, according to the video aired by Egypt’s religious Annas TV on Tuesday.

The video went viral after being posted on YouTube – accompanied by English subtitles by Memri TV –, with 61,691 views until Thursday night.

“The United States of the Arabs will be restored on the hands of that man [Mursi] and his supporters. The capital of the [Muslim] Caliphate will be Jerusalem with God’s will,” Hegazy said, as the crowds cheered, waving the Egyptian flags along with the flags of the Islamist Hamas group, which rules the Gaza Strip.

“Tomorrow Mursi will liberate Gaza,” the crowds chanted.

“Yes, we will either pray in Jerusalem or we will be martyred there,” Hegazy said.

Hegazy’s speech came during a presidential campaign rally at the Egyptian Delta city of Mahalla, where Mursi attended along with the Muslim Brotherhood Supreme Guide Mohammed Badei and members of the group and its political wing the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP).

Mursi will challenge Egypt’s former prime minister Ahmed Shafiq in the election run-off, scheduled on June 16 and 17. Shafiq, an air force general, was the country’s last prime minister before former president Hosni Mubarak was forced to step down by a popular uprising in February 2011.

A court on Saturday sentenced the former ruler and his interior minister to life imprisonment for their role in the killings of up to 850 protesters in the January 25 uprising that ended Mubarak’s 30-year rule. Six senior police officers were acquitted for lack of evidence.

 The verdicts were met by angry street protests by Egyptians who considered them too lenient and demanded a purge of the judiciary.

 Members of the Islamist-dominated parliament attacked the verdicts, accusing the court of ignoring the rights of peaceful protesters killed in the uprising.

Hegazy led thousands of protesters at Cairo’s iconic Tarir Square against the verdicts. Protesters also called for the endorsing of the ‘Political Isolation Law’ that could bar political figures from Mubarak era, including Shafiq, from joining political life in the country for some years.

Endorsing the law, which will be decided by Cairo Supreme Constitutional Court on June 14, two days before the election run-off, could push Shafiq out of the presidential race.

For activists, choosing Shafiq would symbolize a return to the old regime and an end to the revolution. Voting for Mursi, on the other hand, would mean handing Egypt to an Islamic movement they say has monopolized power since the uprising.