As a British citizen, I am appalled and distressed at the position of the UK government on Egypt, especially its efforts, along with Australia and France, to take Egypt to the United Nations Security Council.
You must have witnessed with your own eyes the millions who went to the squares pleading with the army to save the country from Mohammed Mursi who was leading Egypt towards social, political and economic suicide. Gen. el-Sisi answered their call and is now being painted as a brutal dictator; wrongly so. No country in the world would permit thousands of people hostile to the majority and the government to set up encampments in their capital, guarded by armed militias. How would the British prime minister behave if 5,000 Islamist jihadists longing for martyrdom for themselves and their children occupied Trafalgar Square and Piccadilly?
The fault must lie with Mursi for refusing to resign and thus plunging the nation into turmoil and violence, as well as Muslim Brotherhood leaders such as the Supreme Guide Mohammed Badie, Beltagy, El Erian, and Safwat Hegazy who determinedly conflated a political crisis into one of religion, labelling anyone who opposed them as infidels. They absolutely brainwashed the crowds with messages such as the Angel Jibril (Gabriel) was praying alongside them. I heard them call many times for Egypt to become an Islamist state, which is not what the majority wants or will accept. I saw Badie speaking at Rabaa Adawiya on Al Jazeera Mubasher Misr (airing from broadcast vans stolen from State TV) some weeks ago. I heard him tell his following to lay down their lives to bring Mursi back to the palace on their shoulders and urging them to martyrdom. Shortly afterwards, armed men from the square marched to take on Tahrir revolutionaries but were stopped by the police on the 6th October Bridge. It wasn’t long before they marched to the Republican Guard H.Q., where they believed Mursi was being held, with fatal results. But I watched the videos showing they were shooting at the guards from behind pillars, throwing Molotov Cocktails and other heavy objects from roof tops.
Ever since they have been holding this nation hostage, clogging up the roads, making the lives of residents living around Rabaa miserable with constant noise, the use of their gardens as toilets, bullets flying through their windows and having to be frisked each time they left their homes. Would London put up with this? Worse, the MB promised that those sit-ins would mushroom throughout the capital and all over the nation. Of course they were a threat to national security. Legions would march out of the square during the early hours of each morning to provoke the army, attempt to storm police stations, clash with their opposition and, on one occasion, they tried to storm the Media City, where the private networks are housed.
They were permitted to remain for 45 days. International efforts failed because MB leaders refused to budge unless Mursi was reinstated along with the Islamist-weighted constitution. Yet the Italian PM today wrote that they failed because of the army’s intransigence. This is simply not the case, as I am sure you know only too well. How could Mursi be returned when up to a third of the country didn’t want him? That would have been a sure fire recipe for civil war.
The MB have a well oiled propaganda machine headed by Gehad el-Haddad who used to work for Bill Clinton. He has been flooding newspapers, including the Guardian, with his columns, stuffed with untruths, even the suggestion that the crowds on June 30th had been Photoshopped!! The Guardian failed to inform its readers that he was the MB’s spokesman. The MB also retains an army of Internet warriors who visit every Western newspaper site where they disseminate their propaganda in the form of comments appended to articles.
Gen. el-Sisi told the Washington Post that the US had turned its back on the Egyptian people. He was right. Pres. Obama’s spokeswoman has never said one word against the Brotherhood and neither have any of the US or UK newspapers. I feel as though I have entered a twilight world where right and wrong have been transposed. Yesterday, MB doctors were seen on CNN and the BBC claiming that up to 10,000 were killed by security forces yesterday. Today, an MB spokesman appears on CNN’s Amanpour program actually saying those sit-ins were peaceful when guns, automatic weapons, bullets and Molotovs have been discovered. Amnesty International has reported that people were abducted, taken to Rabaa and tortured. Men minus their fingers and showing signs of torture have been shown on local TV channels. Some 11 bodies were found close to Rabaa. Minibuses were intercepted transporting street children and orphans to Rabaa, lured by the promise of new clothes and good food.
If those sit-ins were peaceful, then how did the 45 policemen die? Did they kill each other? Besides there is video evidence that the Mursi crowd were shooting. Most of the crowd was unarmed but it was found that they were paying gunmen LE 1,500 each day to protect the sit-ins. Since, they were cleared, the MB has torched or vandalized 36 churches, set numerous public buildings on fire, including the town hall of Giza, and in Alexandria they murdered a taxi driver and his female passenger this evening around Victoria because he displayed a poster of el-Sisi. Also in Alexandria, they’ve been shooting and killing. A mass grave of 20 corpses was discovered under the Rabaa mosque, a decomposed body was found dumped in the garbage at Rabaa, a torture room complete with a noose and three bodies wrapped in blankets were discovered in the mosque near el Nahda. Yesterday evening, they slaughtered 11 policemen and mutilated their bodies. Are these the people the US and the UK support? Bush invented the so-called War on Terror which Egypt is engaged in right now. The Muslim Brotherhood is the sister organization of Hamas, considered terrorist by the US, and almost all Al Qaeda leaders, including Bin Laden, Al Zawahiri and Saif el Adel were/are members of the MB. What on earth is going on here? Why is the UK siding with the MB, the mother organization to the Jamaa Islamiyaa who killed so many tourists in Luxor during the late 90s and assassinated Sadat? This is mindboggling.
The US and EU countries are choosing to back terrorists on a killing rampage. Doesn’t this give you pause for thought at least? Of course, the army was right to impose emergency law. I live in Alexandria and I would be terrified if those killers were let loose at night unencumbered.
You are in the country. Presumably, you know what is going on. So I would respectfully request you to impart the truth of the situation to your colleagues in London. Below are some videos and factual articles evidencing the truth.
The video of the torture room at a mosque near Nahda showing bodies wrapped in blankets and a noose hanging from the ceiling appeared on Al Hayat. Unfortunately I am unable to locate it.
Where is the outrage? Where is the condemnation of the Muslim Brotherhood from the UK? The majority of the Egyptian people don’t want them in power. Why aren’t their voices being listened to and respected? At the very least, I would ask you to place before the UK government the other side of the coin because right now its heads up to the Brotherhood.
Aren’t the Americans and the British at all concerned that they are pushing Egypt into the arms of Putin? What kind of geostrategic thinking is this? When the interim government and the army is coming under a barrage of flack, it will have no choice but to turn to another world power for military and economic support. What the US and Britain is doing is wrong in so many ways, morally, strategically, and it’s a betrayal of liberal values and its longtime Egyptian friends and allies.
Linda S. Heard is a British specialist writer on Middle East affairs, residing in Alexandria, Egypt. She welcomes feedback and can be contacted by email at heardonthegrapevines@yahoo.co.uk.
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An open letter to James Watt, UK ambassador to Egypt
Posted on August 19, 2013 by Linda S. Heard
As a British citizen, I am appalled and distressed at the position of the UK government on Egypt, especially its efforts, along with Australia and France, to take Egypt to the United Nations Security Council.
You must have witnessed with your own eyes the millions who went to the squares pleading with the army to save the country from Mohammed Mursi who was leading Egypt towards social, political and economic suicide. Gen. el-Sisi answered their call and is now being painted as a brutal dictator; wrongly so. No country in the world would permit thousands of people hostile to the majority and the government to set up encampments in their capital, guarded by armed militias. How would the British prime minister behave if 5,000 Islamist jihadists longing for martyrdom for themselves and their children occupied Trafalgar Square and Piccadilly?
The fault must lie with Mursi for refusing to resign and thus plunging the nation into turmoil and violence, as well as Muslim Brotherhood leaders such as the Supreme Guide Mohammed Badie, Beltagy, El Erian, and Safwat Hegazy who determinedly conflated a political crisis into one of religion, labelling anyone who opposed them as infidels. They absolutely brainwashed the crowds with messages such as the Angel Jibril (Gabriel) was praying alongside them. I heard them call many times for Egypt to become an Islamist state, which is not what the majority wants or will accept. I saw Badie speaking at Rabaa Adawiya on Al Jazeera Mubasher Misr (airing from broadcast vans stolen from State TV) some weeks ago. I heard him tell his following to lay down their lives to bring Mursi back to the palace on their shoulders and urging them to martyrdom. Shortly afterwards, armed men from the square marched to take on Tahrir revolutionaries but were stopped by the police on the 6th October Bridge. It wasn’t long before they marched to the Republican Guard H.Q., where they believed Mursi was being held, with fatal results. But I watched the videos showing they were shooting at the guards from behind pillars, throwing Molotov Cocktails and other heavy objects from roof tops.
Ever since they have been holding this nation hostage, clogging up the roads, making the lives of residents living around Rabaa miserable with constant noise, the use of their gardens as toilets, bullets flying through their windows and having to be frisked each time they left their homes. Would London put up with this? Worse, the MB promised that those sit-ins would mushroom throughout the capital and all over the nation. Of course they were a threat to national security. Legions would march out of the square during the early hours of each morning to provoke the army, attempt to storm police stations, clash with their opposition and, on one occasion, they tried to storm the Media City, where the private networks are housed.
They were permitted to remain for 45 days. International efforts failed because MB leaders refused to budge unless Mursi was reinstated along with the Islamist-weighted constitution. Yet the Italian PM today wrote that they failed because of the army’s intransigence. This is simply not the case, as I am sure you know only too well. How could Mursi be returned when up to a third of the country didn’t want him? That would have been a sure fire recipe for civil war.
The MB have a well oiled propaganda machine headed by Gehad el-Haddad who used to work for Bill Clinton. He has been flooding newspapers, including the Guardian, with his columns, stuffed with untruths, even the suggestion that the crowds on June 30th had been Photoshopped!! The Guardian failed to inform its readers that he was the MB’s spokesman. The MB also retains an army of Internet warriors who visit every Western newspaper site where they disseminate their propaganda in the form of comments appended to articles.
Gen. el-Sisi told the Washington Post that the US had turned its back on the Egyptian people. He was right. Pres. Obama’s spokeswoman has never said one word against the Brotherhood and neither have any of the US or UK newspapers. I feel as though I have entered a twilight world where right and wrong have been transposed. Yesterday, MB doctors were seen on CNN and the BBC claiming that up to 10,000 were killed by security forces yesterday. Today, an MB spokesman appears on CNN’s Amanpour program actually saying those sit-ins were peaceful when guns, automatic weapons, bullets and Molotovs have been discovered. Amnesty International has reported that people were abducted, taken to Rabaa and tortured. Men minus their fingers and showing signs of torture have been shown on local TV channels. Some 11 bodies were found close to Rabaa. Minibuses were intercepted transporting street children and orphans to Rabaa, lured by the promise of new clothes and good food.
If those sit-ins were peaceful, then how did the 45 policemen die? Did they kill each other? Besides there is video evidence that the Mursi crowd were shooting. Most of the crowd was unarmed but it was found that they were paying gunmen LE 1,500 each day to protect the sit-ins. Since, they were cleared, the MB has torched or vandalized 36 churches, set numerous public buildings on fire, including the town hall of Giza, and in Alexandria they murdered a taxi driver and his female passenger this evening around Victoria because he displayed a poster of el-Sisi. Also in Alexandria, they’ve been shooting and killing. A mass grave of 20 corpses was discovered under the Rabaa mosque, a decomposed body was found dumped in the garbage at Rabaa, a torture room complete with a noose and three bodies wrapped in blankets were discovered in the mosque near el Nahda. Yesterday evening, they slaughtered 11 policemen and mutilated their bodies. Are these the people the US and the UK support? Bush invented the so-called War on Terror which Egypt is engaged in right now. The Muslim Brotherhood is the sister organization of Hamas, considered terrorist by the US, and almost all Al Qaeda leaders, including Bin Laden, Al Zawahiri and Saif el Adel were/are members of the MB. What on earth is going on here? Why is the UK siding with the MB, the mother organization to the Jamaa Islamiyaa who killed so many tourists in Luxor during the late 90s and assassinated Sadat? This is mindboggling.
The US and EU countries are choosing to back terrorists on a killing rampage. Doesn’t this give you pause for thought at least? Of course, the army was right to impose emergency law. I live in Alexandria and I would be terrified if those killers were let loose at night unencumbered.
You are in the country. Presumably, you know what is going on. So I would respectfully request you to impart the truth of the situation to your colleagues in London. Below are some videos and factual articles evidencing the truth.
36 Churches Torched and Vandalized. (14 Aug.)
The Muslim Brotherhood shooting citizens in Alexandria this evening (15 Aug.).
Here is a gruesome video of the body the MB tossed in the garbage at Rabaa. I would warn you that this could be disturbing.
This is a disturbing video showing 11 police officers shot and mutilated by MB supporters yesterday evening.
Here are some of the bodies of people abducted by the MB and killed in Rabaa. They were found under the mosque stripped of I.D. cards
Some weapons and bullets found in the smaller sit-in Al Nahda yesterday morning.
The video of the torture room at a mosque near Nahda showing bodies wrapped in blankets and a noose hanging from the ceiling appeared on Al Hayat. Unfortunately I am unable to locate it.
Where is the outrage? Where is the condemnation of the Muslim Brotherhood from the UK? The majority of the Egyptian people don’t want them in power. Why aren’t their voices being listened to and respected? At the very least, I would ask you to place before the UK government the other side of the coin because right now its heads up to the Brotherhood.
Aren’t the Americans and the British at all concerned that they are pushing Egypt into the arms of Putin? What kind of geostrategic thinking is this? When the interim government and the army is coming under a barrage of flack, it will have no choice but to turn to another world power for military and economic support. What the US and Britain is doing is wrong in so many ways, morally, strategically, and it’s a betrayal of liberal values and its longtime Egyptian friends and allies.
Linda S. Heard is a British specialist writer on Middle East affairs, residing in Alexandria, Egypt. She welcomes feedback and can be contacted by email at heardonthegrapevines@yahoo.co.uk.