Al Jazeera has posted an interesting review of the current state of the Egyptian Brotherhood written by “An Independent Contractor” (GMBDW notes that this is the first we have seen a report by major media characterized this way). The report begins:
June 10, 2014 by An independent contributor CAIRO — One of Hamza Sarawy’s greatest victories against Egypt’s new military-backed government was a press conference that never happened.
Sarawy is a spokesman for the Anti-Coup Alliance, a coalition of mostly Islamist parties that is the closest thing the Muslim Brotherhood has anymore to a public presence in Egypt. In March, the Alliance called a press conference to refute a government report on the deadly August 2013 clearing of the last major protest supporting ousted former president Mohammed Morsi. Just as journalists were beginning to gather, police swept in and shut down the building and the surrounding neighborhood.
‘As far as I’m concerned, that was a success story,’ Sarawy said. ‘I exposed the regime. I revealed that you’re not allowed to speak about anything anymore.’
That the Muslim Brotherhood’s public victories have been reduced to cat-and-mouse troublemaking speaks volumes about the group’s state. The organization that dominated the aftermath of the 2011 revolution has been purged from public life on a scale that hasn’t been seen since army Col. Gamal Abdel Nasser, the founding leader of modern Egypt, nearly crushed the group in the 1950s. The vast majority of the Brotherhood’s senior leadership has been jailed, including Supreme Guide Mohammed Badea; his deputy, Kheirat al Shater; and much of the decision-making Guidance Bureau. An estimated 16,000 alleged Brotherhood members are in state custody (the Brotherhood puts the number closer to 23,000) and hundreds more have already been sentenced to death, including Badea.
Read the rest here.
One of the facets of the report also worth noting is the following denial by Dr. Wael Haddara that he is an “actual member” of the Brotherhood (The GMBDW wonders about the difference between a “member” and an “actual member”):
‘The top three tiers are gone, so tier four moves up,’ said Dr. Wael Haddara, a former political adviser to Morsi. Haddara, like Sarawy and Abdel-Rahman, denies he is an actual member of the Brotherhood but said he remains in contact with senior officials and has acted as one of the group’s ambassadors in meetings with foreign governments.”
In August 2013, the GMBDW discussed a long report by the Point de Bascule blog which revealed that Dr. Haddara, the former President of the Muslim Association of Canada, was serving as a senior advisor to the now deposed Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi. That report analyzed evidence linking Dr. Haddara to the Global Muslim Brotherhood.