Factbox-Egypt keeps former powerhouse Muslim Brotherhood out of politics

(Reuters) – After years of sweeping crackdowns on dissent, Egypt is about to launch a political dialogue, however the once-powerful and now outlawed Muslim Brotherhood is excluded.

Lengthy considered as probably the most influential Islamist motion within the Center East, the Brotherhood rose to energy in Egypt’s first trendy free election in 2012, a yr after veteran President Hosni Mubarak was toppled in a preferred rebellion.

However the Brotherhood’s success, which adopted a long time of confrontation with its previous adversary the state, was shortlived.

In 2013, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, then armed forces chief and now president, eliminated the Brotherhood’s Mohamed Mursi from energy after mass protests towards his rule.

Egypt then launched its most ferocious crackdown towards the group, handing down dying sentences or lengthy jail phrases for its leaders and driving its members underground or overseas.

Safety forces gunned down a whole lot of Brotherhood supporters at a Cairo protest camp in 2013. At the very least 817 individuals had been killed and certain greater than 1,000 when the safety forces attacked the camp utilizing bulldozers, snipers, police and floor forces, in keeping with a Human Rights Watch report.

Cairo defended its actions, saying it had given protesters the chance to depart peacefully and that armed parts inside the Brotherhood initiated the violence.

Regardless of a long time of repression, the Brotherhood developed an in depth and well-organised community of dedicated activists and had received public assist by means of the charitable work of its skilled members. They had been additionally influential in skilled organisations such because the medical doctors’ and legal professionals’ syndicates.

Listed here are some information concerning the Muslim Brotherhood.

* ORIGINS:

– Schoolteacher Hassan al-Banna based the Brotherhood within the Suez Canal city of Ismailia in 1928, partly in response to the British occupation of Egypt. It was one of many first and most profitable actions advocating Islam as a political programme in a contemporary context.

– Inside 20 years, the motion had grown to greater than 500,000 members, with branches in different Arab nations.

– The Brotherhood mentioned it’s was dedicated to bringing political change in Egypt by means of non-violent and democratic means.

* BANNED:

– The Brotherhood was banned in 1954 after the federal government of the day accused the group of making an attempt to assassinate President Gamal Abdel Nasser, a cost the Brotherhood has all the time denied.

– A protracted interval of repression started to ease below President Anwar Sadat within the Seventies. Though it remained banned below Mubarak, the Brotherhood operated overtly inside limits that assorted on the whim of the authorities.

– Mubarak’s authorities denied the Brotherhood the fitting to kind a political get together, arguing that the structure, which the federal government wrote, banned non secular events.

– Sisi branded the Brotherhood a terrorist group and mentioned it poses an existential risk to Egypt, an allegation it denies. The Brotherhood says it’s dedicated to peaceable activism.

SOURCE OF REGIONAL TENSION:

– Gulf Arab states Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates view the Brotherhood as a risk to their dynastic system of presidency. Each have declared it a terrorist group.

– Fellow Gulf state Qatar nevertheless supported the group and hosted outstanding Brotherhood figures. The Islamist-rooted AK Social gathering of Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan supported the Mursi authorities. Turkish and Qatari assist for the group strained relations with Saudi Arabia.

– In 2019, U.S. President Donald Trump labored to designate group as a terrorist organisation however this by no means transpired.

– A 2015 British authorities evaluation mentioned the group was not “linked to terrorist-related exercise in and towards the UK”. Within the Center East, it noticed a “complicated and situational relationship, in a area the place political violence was and is frequent.”

It mentioned the the group traditionally had “engaged politically the place attainable. However they’ve additionally selectively used violence and generally terror in pursuit of their institutional targets”.

– Many political events and marketing campaign teams within the Center East and additional afield hint their roots to the Brotherhood. The militant group Hamas, as an illustration, was based because the Palestinian department of the Brotherhood. The motion is outlawed in Syria, the place it helped foment an armed rebellion in 1982.

* ELECTIONS:

– The group participated in parliamentary elections in Egypt within the Nineteen Eighties however boycotted the vote in 1990, when it joined a lot of the nation’s opposition in protesting electoral strictures. The Brotherhood skirted a ban on its actions by fielding candidates in elections as independents.

– The Brotherhood received 17 seats within the 2000 parliamentary election after which took 20 % of the seats within the 454-seat meeting in 2005, making it the largest opposition bloc regardless of widespread rigging within the vote.

– The Brotherhood boycotted the 2010 election, which the opposition denounced as rigged. Such abuses fuelled the anger that led to protests in 2011 which introduced down Mubarak and his authorities.

* REPRESSION AND UPRISING:

– Whereas the Brotherhood was in a position to perform below Mubarak, it was additionally a goal of repression. Police routinely arrested Brotherhood members, together with senior leaders, and held them indefinitely with out cost.

– Fears that Mubarak’s inner safety may ship a crushing blow led the group to take a backseat within the revolt towards Mubarak. That rebellion was largely pushed by activists who put nationwide satisfaction earlier than faith.

– It was solely later within the 18-day rebellion that the Brotherhood got here out in full assist, though the group mentioned some members of the Brotherhood had taken half independently all through the protests.

(Writing by Michael Georgy; Enhancing by Mark Heinrich)