Egypt's ex-military chief says Muslim Brotherhood won’t return

PanARMENIAN.Net - Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, the former military chief who removed Egypt's Islamist president and who is now poised to win the post in elections this month, says the Muslim Brotherhood will never return as an organization, accusing it of using militant groups as cover to destabilize the country, the Associated Press reported.

El-Sissi spoke in the first TV interview of his campaign, aired late on Monday, May 5, vowing that restoring stability and bringing development are his priorities. The comments were a seemingly unequivocal rejection of any political reconciliation with the Brotherhood, which was Egypt's most powerful political force until el-Sissi removed President Mohammed Morsi, a member of the group, last summer.

Asked whether the Brotherhood will no longer exist under his presidency, el-Sissi replied, "Yes. Just like that."

"It's not me that finished it, the Egyptians have. The problem is not with me," he said.

The Brotherhood and its Islamist allies won every election following the 2011 ouster of autocrat Hosni Mubarak, dominating the parliament and capturing the presidency under Morsi. The Brotherhood's electoral strength was largely rooted in a widespread grassroots organization it had built up for decades despite being banned under Mubarak.

But after a year in office, millions joined protests demanding Morsi's removal, accusing his Brotherhood of monopolizing power and seeking to change the country's identity along the lines of Brotherhood ideology — prompting el-Sissi's ouster of Morsi.

According to the AP, in the joint interview with two private Egyptian TV stations CBC and ONTV, el-Sissi directly accused the Brotherhood of being behind the campaign of bombings and shootings. He said the movement "created" Islamic militant groups to use as "covers to fight from behind ... to keep the movement away from any accusations." He said a senior Brotherhood leader had warned him that if he removed Morsi, extremist fighters from Afghanistan and elsewhere would come to Egypt to fight.

The Brotherhood denies any connection to militants.

He said the Brotherhood's ideology was based on "arrogance in religion" — and the presence of that strain of thought had destabilized Egyptian society for decades.

"The thought structure of these groups says that we are not true Muslims, and they believed conflict was inevitable because they consider us non-believers," he said. "It will not work for there to be such thinking again."

The 59-year-old el-Sissi retired from the military in March with the rank of field marshal to launch his candidacy. The one-hour interview was his first direct address to the public since he declared his intention to run and after the start of the official campaigning on May 2.

His election campaign is likely to largely be made up of TV and media interviews and private meetings, with few street appearances, mainly because of security concerns. In the interview, he said two assassination plots against him have already been uncovered, without giving details.

A second part of the interview, likely to go into more details about his economic program, is to be aired on Tuesday.