US media is reporting that a member of the recent Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood delegation hosted by the US State Department has said that the meeting was also attended by an unidentified White House official. According to the Washington Free Beacon report:
A Muslim Brotherhood member who recently was hosted at the State Department along with several of the Islamist group’s key allies now claims that a White House official also was present in that meeting, according to recent remarks.
Abdel Mawgoud al-Dardery, a Brotherhood member and former Egyptian parliamentarian, was in the United States late last month along with a delegation of fellow Brotherhood leaders and allies.
The Brotherhood-aligned delegation caused an international stir after the Washington Free Beacon revealed that it had been hosted for a meeting with several State Department officials.
Another member of the group, a Brotherhood-aligned judge in Egypt, posed for a picture while at Foggy Bottom in which he held up the Islamic group’s notorious four-finger Rabia symbol.
While the State Department initially misled reporters about the meeting, it was eventually forced to admit that several Obama administration officials—including a deputy assistant secretary for democracy, human rights, and labor—and State Department officials met with the delegation.
Al-Dardery now claims that in addition to these State Department representatives, a member of the White House also participated in the sit-down.
‘The trip started for the [Egyptian] community in New York and New Jersey,’ al-Dardery said in a recent interview with the Arabic language pro-Muslim Brotherhood El Sharq TV. ‘Then during the trip we undertook to meet with some from the ‘establishment,’ the administration, in the United States. And we met at the State Department and there was a representative there from the White House.’
Read the rest here.
The GMBDW reported late last month that the State Department had hosted the Brotherhood delegation for a meeting to discuss their efforts to oppose the current government in Egypt. As that post pointed out, another event was held and hosted by the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy (CSID) at which the Brotherhood delegation also appeared. As our profile on CSID explains, the organization was founded in 1998 in what appears to have been a cooperative effort among the US Muslim Brotherhood, the US State Department and Georgetown University academic Dr. John Esposito who served during the 1990’s as a State Department “foreign affairs analyst” and who has at least a dozen past or present affiliations with global Muslim Brotherhood/Hamas organizations. The GMBDW also subsequently reported that according to a State Department spokesman, the Brotherhood delegation had their trip organized and funded by Georgetown University. However, we reported later that the State Department had acknowledged that it gave out incorrect information and the delegation was actually sponsored by CSID.
For a profile on CSID, go here.