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CAIRO — Islamist supporters of Egypt’s ousted president called for demonstrations across the nation on Friday after remnants of the country’s old government reasserted themselves in a crackdown that left scores of Muslim Brotherhood figures under arrest, their television stations closed and former officials restored to powerful posts.
CAIRO — Islamist supporters of Mohamed Morsi, Egypt’s newly ousted president, held enormous and defiant protests across Cairo and elsewhere on Friday demanding his reinstatement and engaging in sometimes deadly clashes with security forces and anti-Morsi demonstrators that threatened to further deepen the country’s polarization.
The actions provided the first indications of what Egypt’s new political order could look like after Mohamed Morsi, an Islamist and Egypt’s first freely elected president who had been in power for only a year, was deposed by Egypt’s military commanders on Wednesday.
News agencies quoting Health Ministry data said at least 17 people were killed in political violence nationwide, most of them in Cairo. Witnesses said they saw at least five pro-Morsi demonstrators killed and many more wounded in gunfire outside the Republican Guard compound where Mr. Morsi was believed to be detained, as thousands confronted a phalanx of armed soldiers, armored vehicles and barbed wire ringing the facility.
The commanders, who installed an interim civilian leader, said they had acted to bring the country back together after millions of Egyptians demonstrated against Mr. Morsi, claiming he had arrogated power, neglected the economy and worsened divisions in society.
“Where’s Morsi?” they screamed. Others denounced Egypt’s defense minister, Gen. Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi, who ordered Mr. Morsi removed from power Wednesday night. “Traitor, traitor, traitor! Sisi is a traitor!,” they cried.
But Mr. Morsi’s downfall and the swift effort that followed to repress the Muslim Brotherhood enraged its constituents, whose calls for demonstrations on Friday could provide a telling test of the interim government’s claims of inclusiveness toward all segments of Egypt’s population. With many Islamist leaders detained, the possible scale of the protests was unclear.
With military helicopters circling well into the night, a new round of mass street violence convulsed downtown Cairo. Rival crowds of protesters hurled rocks, missiles, Molotov cocktails and fireworks at each other in Tahrir Square, the spiritual center of Egypt’s 2011 revolution, and the 6th October Bridge, a heavily traveled elevated highway that spans the Nile River. “This has become a gang war, a street battle,” said Hisham al-Sayyed Suleiman, 50, an anti-Morsi demonstrator.
Early on Friday, in a sign of the potential resistance to the new order, armed Islamists struck at four security force positions in the restive Sinai Peninsula, killing one soldier and wounding two in a rocket attack on a police post in Rafah on the border with Gaza Strip, according to news reports that quoted security officials. Separate rocket attacks were said to have been aimed at military checkpoints at El Arish airport.
Tens of thousands of people also faced off in the streets just north of Cairo’s famous Egyptian museum and in front of the Ramses Hilton, a few hundreds north of Tahrir Square.
The immediate catalyst for the violent confrontation in central Cairo was over who had the right to Tahrir Square, the central theater of the 2011 revolution that led to the toppling of Mr. Morsi’s autocratic predecessor, Hosni Mubarak, and has been the main spot for aggrieved Egyptians ever since. Thousands of Islamists who had been protesting elsewhere in the city marched across the 6th October Bridge intending to enter Tahrir Square, but crowds celebrating the military’s removal of Mr. Morsi rushed to keep them out.
“I don’t see this ending soon, because the Islamists keep saying they want Morsi or death,” Mr. Suleiman said. “The only hope is for security to come and pick them all up.”
The pro-Morsi crowds, numbering in the tens of thousands, reflected the resilient power of the Muslim Brotherhood to organize mass rallies in the aftermath of the military intervention that deposed Mr. Morsi, the Islamist who was Egypt’s first freely elected president. The Muslim Brotherhood called the protests the “Friday of Rejection” and insisted that Mr. Morsi must be reinstated as the rightful head of state.
“We will bring him back bearing him on our necks, sacrifice our souls for him,” said Mohamed Badie, the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, who appeared at a mass pro-Morsi rally at the Rabaa al-Adawiya Mosque, stirring the crowd into impassioned anger. “We will bring back the rights of the Egyptian people who were wronged by this disgraceful conspiracy.”
Mr. Badie said the widespread news media reports that he was among the Islamist leaders arrested in a post-Morsi crackdown by security forces were false. But in the aftermath of Mr. Morsi’s ouster, hundreds of Islamists were detained, and even though a few senior Muslim Brotherhood aides were released on Friday, all indications pointed to a worsening divide between Mr. Morsi’s Islamist supporters and his critics — including the powerful military that deposed him.
An interim president installed by the military, the former chief justice of the Supreme Constitutional Court, Adli Mansour, took a further step on Friday to disempower the vestiges of Mr. Morsi’s government by formally dissolving the Shura Council, the country’s only operating house of Parliament, which had been dominated by the Islamists. The constitutional court had disbanded the lower house last year, one of many challenges Mr. Morsi had faced in his troubled tenure.
Islamists also expressed rage at how their ability to convey their narrative in the news media had been marginalized or eliminated in the two days since Mr. Morsi was deposed. Despite the interim government’s pledge of inclusiveness, Islamist television broadcasters were shuttered, and state television barely covered the breadth of the pro-Morsi demonstrations on Friday.
Egypt’s military commanders have justified the ouster of Mr. Morsi by saying they felt compelled to bring the country back together after millions of Egyptians demonstrated against him, claiming he had sought to monopolize power, neglected the economy and worsened divisions in society.
But if anything, the forced removal of Mr. Morsi seemed only to add a bitter new divisiveness into Egyptian politics.
The army’s re-entry and the arrest of Muslim Brotherhood members in particular made many fear that they had not only lost their political power but could also face the same repression they endured under President Mubarak.
Protester Hussein Nada, 43, said he had spent eight years in prison under President Mubarak because he was a member of the Gamaa al-Islamiyya, an Islamist group. He named the four different prisons he had spent time in while counting them on his fingers.
“They hung me up, they beat me, they used electricity — all the means of torture they had,” he said.
“Anyone from the opposition who came to power could decide to put us all back in prison,” he said. “As soon as the army came back, they put hundreds on the arrests list, so we fear we could lose all we’ve gained.”
Early on Friday, in a sign of the potential resistance to the new order, armed Islamists struck at four security force positions in the restive Sinai Peninsula, killing one soldier and wounding two in a rocket attack on a police post in Rafah on the border with Gaza Strip, according to news reports that quoted security officials. Separate rocket attacks were said to have been aimed at military checkpoints at El Arish airport in Sinai.
The Associated Press quoted an Egyptian official as saying the border crossing to the Gaza Strip had been closed indefinitely.
The Associated Press quoted an Egyptian official as saying the border crossing to the Gaza Strip had been closed indefinitely.
In an apparent show of force, military jets howled over the capital, Cairo, for a second day on Friday, news reports said, leaving streams of smoke in the red, white and black colors of the national flag. By midday, few protesters appeared to have gathered in Tahrir Square — a focal point of anti-Morsi dissent earlier this week. But news reports said the military deployed reinforcements on Friday near protesters elsewhere in Cairo chanting pro-Morsi slogans.
At the same time, the military’s move against Mr. Morsi, which has drawn a mixed regional response, seems to have created a degree of isolation within the broader African continent. News reports said the African Union, the Pan-African representative body based in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, resolved to suspend Egypt from all its activities in line with rules on the interruption of constitutional rule.
At the same time, the military’s move against Mr. Morsi, which has drawn a mixed regional response, seemed to have brought a degree of isolation within the broader African continent when, news reports said, the African Union, the Pan-African representative body based in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, resolved to suspend Egypt from all its activities in line with rules on the interruption of constitutional rule.
The prospect of more confrontation also raised concern at the United Nations. Navi Pillay, the top United Nations human rights official, said in a statement from Geneva that a “concerted effort is needed by all parties to establish sound political and legal institutions.”
It was already clear by late Thursday that the forced change of power, which had the trappings of a military coup spurred by a popular revolt, had only aggravated the most seething division — that between the Muslim Brotherhood and the security apparatus built up by Hosni Mubarak, the president toppled in Egypt’s 2011 revolution.
The divisions belied a stately ceremony in the country’s highest court, where a little-known judge was sworn in as the new acting head of state Thursday. The interim president, the chief justice of the Supreme Constitutional Court, Adli Mansour, said he looked forward to parliamentary and presidential elections that would express the “true will of the people.” Mr. Mansour praised the military’s intervention so that Egypt could “correct the path of its glorious revolution.”
Fighter jets screamed through the Cairo skies, and fireworks burst over huge celebrations in Tahrir Square.
At the same time, security forces held Mr. Morsi incommunicado in an undisclosed location, Islamist broadcast outlets were closed and prosecutors sought the arrest of hundreds of Mr. Morsi’s Brotherhood colleagues, in a sign that they had the most to lose in Egypt’s latest political convulsion.
“What kind of national reconciliation starts with arresting people?” asked Ebrahem el-Erian after security officials came to his family home before dawn to try to arrest his father, Essam el-Erian, a Brotherhood official. “This is complete exclusion.”
Many of the most significant political shifts pointed to the reassertion of the “deep state,” a term often used for the powerful branches of the Mubarak-era government that remained in place after he had been deposed.
Much of that state apparatus has always shown deep distrust of Mr. Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood, despite their clear victories in parliamentary and presidential elections.
Mr. Morsi never succeeded in asserting his control over the military, the security services, the judiciary or the sprawling state bureaucracy. Nor was he able to dismantle the support network that Mr. Mubarak and his National Democratic Party cultivated through nearly 30 years in power.
So once the military removed Mr. Morsi, many of these elements set their sights on him and his group.
“What do you call it when the police, state security, old members of the National Democratic Party, the media all rally to bring down the regime?” asked Emad Shahin, a political science professor at the American University in Cairo. “Is that a revolution? If this is the revolution, so be it.”
In his swearing-in address, Mr. Mansour offered an olive branch to the Islamists, saying they were part of Egyptian society and deserved to participate in the political process. The National Salvation Front, an umbrella opposition group that had pushed for Mr. Morsi’s ouster, also called for inclusive politics.
But in less than 24 hours after the military’s intervention, prosecutors issued arrest warrants for at least 200 Islamists, most members of the Muslim Brotherhood. All were wanted on accusations of incitement to kill demonstrators.
Dozens were arrested, including Mohamed Badie, the group’s supreme guide; his deputy, Rashad Bayoumi; and the head of its political wing, Saad el-Katatni. Also on the wanted list was Khairat el-Shater, the group’s powerful financier and strategist.
The arrest campaign recalled the Muslim Brotherhood’s decades as a banned organization under autocratic rulers.
“This is a police state back in action, and the same faces that were ousted with the Mubarak regime are now appearing on talk shows as analysts,” said a Brotherhood spokesman, Gehad el-Haddad, during an interview with Al Jazeera’s English satellite channel.
He repeated a conspiracy theory often cited by Islamists: what appeared to be an easing of electricity cuts and fuel shortages in recent days indicated that the shortfalls had been artificially created to feed discontent.
“Did someone push a magic button, or was this all part of a plot?” Mr. Haddad asked.
In a statement, the Brotherhood denounced “the military coup against the elected president and the will of the nation” and said it would refuse to deal with any resulting authority. Mr. Morsi’s supporters said their protests on Friday would be meant to “denounce the military coup against legitimacy and in support of the legitimacy of President Morsi.”
Much remains unclear about the new political structure that will emerge, though Mohamed ElBaradei, the Nobel Prize-winning diplomat, has been chosen to represent the liberal opposition.
In a telephone interview, Mr. ElBaradei sought to justify the military’s intervention, calling it a chance to fix the transition to democracy that he said had gone off track after the ouster of Mr. Mubarak.
“We just lost two and a half years,” he said. “As Yogi Berra said, ‘It is déjà vu all over again,’ but hopefully this time we will get it right.”
He also defended the arrests of Islamists, saying that he had been assured they would receive due process and that the shuttered television outlets had incited violence.
“I would be the first one to shout loud and clearly if I see any sign of regression in terms of democracy,” he said.
Many of those who are poised to exercise power in the emerging authority first got their jobs from Mr. Mubarak.
A Mubarak-appointed prosecutor general, Abdel Meguid Mahmoud, returned to his office after a court ruling pushed out the man appointed by Mr. Morsi to replace him.
Mr. Mahmoud, who was equally detested by critics of Mr. Mubarak and Mr. Morsi, called his return to office “a message for every ruler: You must respect your judiciary, and you must respect your judges.”
The pre-Morsi foreign minister, Mohamed Kamel Amr, was also back in the post on Thursday. Mr. Amr had continued to serve under Mr. Morsi but had been sidelined as Mr. Morsi sent other aides to meetings with President Obama and other officials, and he resigned during Mr. Morsi’s final days, a major blow.
Mr. Amr held a series of meetings with the foreign news media on Thursday aimed at refuting the idea that Egypt had undergone a military coup. He also laughed about his relationship with Mr. Morsi, suggesting he had given his foreign counterparts his own view of Egypt’s affairs.
“I was presenting the true picture of his country to the outside world,” he said. “I don’t mean to be blowing my own horn, but I believe that was respected by my counterparts.”
Even the police force, much despised by Mr. Mubarak’s opponents for trying to quash the protests that pushed him from power, has sought to portray itself as standing with the people in the new era.
Fahmy Bahgat, an officer who often speaks for the security services, said in a television interview that the generals’ move “returned the police to the arms of the people once more.”
He also threatened those who challenged the new order.
“Whoever tries to show any support for the ousted president will be met with the utmost resolve,” he said.
The prospect of confrontation raised international concern. Navi Pillay, the top United Nations human rights official, said in a statement from Geneva that a “concerted effort is needed by all parties to establish sound political and legal institutions.”
“There should be no more violence, no arbitrary detention, no illegal acts of retribution,” she said. “Serious steps should also be taken to halt, and investigate, the appalling — and at times seemingly organized — sexual violence targeting women protesters.”
“There should be no more violence, no arbitrary detention, no illegal acts of retribution,” she said. “Serious steps should also be taken to halt, and investigate, the appalling — and at times seemingly organized — sexual violence targeting women protesters.”
Alan
Cowell contributed reporting from London, and Rick Gladstone from New York.
In a sign that the anti-Morsi backlash may have overreached, a Mubarak-appointed prosecutor general, Abdel Meguid Mahmoud, who had been dismissed by Mr. Morsi and was among those reinstated to his office on Thursday, resigned less than 24 hours later, apparently sensitive to the appearance of engaging in political retaliation.
In a statement reported by Ahram Online, Mr. Mahmoud said he had decided to resign to “avoid the embarrassment of making judicial decisions against those who removed me from office.”
Ben Hubbard and David D. Kirkpatrick reported from Cairo, and Rick Gladstone from New York. Mayy El Sheikh and Kareem Fahim contributed reporting from Cairo, and Alan Cowell from London.
