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On 3 July 2013, Mohamed Morsi, then President of Egypt, was deposed by an army coup led by Abdel Fattah al Sisi, the current President, then Defense Minister and head of the Egyptian Armed Forces. Morsi’s presidency lasted only a year but was marked by strong mass protests against his government over deteriorating security and economic conditions in the country and fears of an authoritarian and Islamist drift.
Morsi was the first and only Egyptian president to be elected through democratic elections, aided by the so-called Arab Spring that took place in various Middle Eastern countries between 2010 and 2011. The Arab Spring consisted of a series of protests against corruption, restrictions on freedom and individual rights, and violations of human rights by regimes that began in Tunisia and then spread to other Arab countries. Protests also erupted in Egypt, forcing President Hosni Mubarak to resign in 2011 after thirty years in power.
After growing up in Egypt and studying and working as an engineer in the United States, Morsi was a member of the Egyptian Parliament from 2000 to 2005. He was part of the Muslim Brotherhood, a radical Islamic movement that was founded in Egypt in 1928, had great influence in Arab countries and was considered a terrorist organization in some countries. During Mubarak’s government, the movement was considered an underground group, and for having joined it, Morsi was arrested and imprisoned in 2011.
He managed to escape and, after Mubarak’s resignation, ran for the 2012 presidential elections with the Freedom and Justice party, the political wing of the Muslim Brotherhood: He won the runoff against former prime minister and former air force commander Ahmed Shafiq. His victory was significant because for many Egyptians it marked a definitive break with Mubarak’s longstanding autocratic rule.
His election immediately caused division: many Egyptians saw his victory as the culmination of the Arab Spring revolt and hoped for a definitive break with the past, and the Muslim Brotherhood saw it as an opportunity to reassert itself after years of being seen as an underground group. Others, however, feared that a Muslim Brotherhood president might enforce strict Islamic moral codes or even seek to establish a theocratic government.
In the first phase of his government, Morsi was moderate in domestic politics, but he also succeeded in opening channels of dialogue with the USA and striving for a détente with Israel in foreign policy: In October 2012, Morsi intervened as a mediator between Israel and Hamas, a group of armed Palestinian radicals who de de facto governing the Gaza Strip, managed to broker a ceasefire between the two sides.
Despite these premises, his government was soon accused of using its own policies to exclude the opposition from running the state and of being unable to manage the country’s economy. One decision in particular triggered violent protests. In November 2012, Morsi issued a decree giving the President greater powers, particularly in the area of the judiciary: the provision stipulated that the judiciary should not have the power to challenge the President’s decisions. The aim was to make his presidential decrees final and to prevent a possible slowdown in the work of the Constituent Assembly, which he had charged with drafting a new constitution.
Opponents argued that the president was pursuing an authoritarian course like Mubarak and that the new rules could give Islamists greater control over the country, enforce strict Islamic practices and give other parties a marginal role in Egyptian politics. There was concern that a constitution heavily influenced by the Muslim Brotherhood – which dictated policy and determined most of the articles – would have an Islamist flavor inspired by Sharia, Islamic law, and would run counter to more secular and liberal positions would.
The protests reached their peak in June 2013. Millions of Egyptians demonstrated to protest against the government and to demand Morsi’s resignation or early elections. The military, led by al-Sisi, sided with the demonstrators and overthrew Morsi within days in a coup d’état. With a group of religious leaders, military leaders and members of the Sisi opposition, he announced on television that the country’s constitution had been suspended at the initiative of the army and that the head of the constitutional court would form an interim government.
Morsi has been arrested and charged with a variety of crimes, from espionage to jailbreaking to inciting violence, and he has been a defendant for years in a protracted trial in which he has received multiple convictions. Besides him, many other members of the Muslim Brotherhood also suffered severe repression: a few weeks after Morsi’s ouster, the Egyptian security forces killed more than 800 demonstrators, most of whom belonged to the Muslim Brotherhood. In 2013, the interim government declared the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization, arrested and sentenced to death hundreds of its members and supporters.
Morsi died of complications from a heart attack on June 17, 2019, during a hearing in a trial in which he was accused of corruption and treason.