Hans Rustad Oppositionelle tør nå stå frem og fortelle at da president Morsis tilhengere angrep sist uke, tok de flere demonstranter til fange og torturerte dem ut over natten for å tvinge dem til å tilstå.
Mobben ville ha tilståelser om at demonstrantene var betalt av bakmenn for å demonstrere. Det var akkurat samme mistanke og anklage som president Morsi selv fremsatte i en tale: han hevdet en femtekolonne sto bak demonstrasjonene mot ham. Slik sådde han splid og mistenksomhet mellom folk.
Islamist supporters of President Mohamed Morsi captured, detained and beat dozens of his political opponents last week, holding them for hours with their hands bound on the pavement outside the presidential palace while pressuring them to confess that they had accepted money to use violence in protests against him.
“It was torment for us,” said Yehia Negm, 42, a former diplomat with a badly bruised face and rope marks on his wrists. He said he was among a group of about 50, including four minors, who were held on the pavement overnight. In front of cameras, “they accused me of being a traitor, or conspiring against the country, of being paid to carry weapons and set fires,” he said in an interview. “I thought I would die.”
Kompromittert
Morsi hevdet i sin tale torsdag at femtekolonnister sto bak, og han viste til tilståelser fra demonstranter til politiet. Men ingen slike foreligger, sier menneskerettsgrupper og spør om det er slik at Morsi støtter seg på tilståelser fremkommet ved tortur.
It is impossible to know how much Mr. Morsi, a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood’s political arm, knew about the Islamists’ vigilante justice. But human rights advocates say the detentions raised troubling questions about statements made by the president during his nationally televised address on Thursday. In it, Mr. Morsi appears to have cited confessions obtained by his Islamist supporters, the advocates said, when he promised that confessions under interrogation would show that protesters outside his palace acknowledged ties to his political opposition and had taken money to commit violence.
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The abuses, during a night of street fighting between Islamists and their opponents, have become clear through an accumulation of video and victim testimonies that are now hurting the credibility of Mr. Morsi and his allies as they push forward to this weekend’s referendum on an Islamist-backed draft constitution.
En av Brorskapets fremste ledere, Essam El-Erian, fridde til de verste konspirasjonsteoriene:
Later, when the battle began, he declared on the Brotherhood’s television network, “This is the opportunity to arrest them and reveal the third party which is behind the shooting of live ammunition, and the killing of protesters.”
Og dette forsøkte mobben å presse ut av alle de arresterte: hvem betaler dere?
A few captives were women. Ola Shahba, a well-known activist with a socialist party, was captured by a group of the president’s supporters when she tried to retreat from a collapsing battle line. Her captors began beating her, she said. Then they removed her hood and helmet and realized she was a woman, and she was groped as well.
“I didn’t imagine I could be harassed by a group affiliated with political Islam,” she said in an interview with the talk show host Yousry Fouda, one eye black and blue, and her neck ringed with bruises. “What embassy do you meet in and receive money from?” her attackers demanded to know, she said.
