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Sunday, November 25, 2012

Egypt ousted prosecutor general unravels Brotherhood ‘secrets’

Egypt ousted prosecutor general unravels Brotherhood ‘secrets’

Former Egyptian Prosecutor General Abdel-Meguid Mahmoud. (Courtesy: AP)
Former Egyptian Prosecutor General Abdel-Meguid Mahmoud. (Courtesy: AP)
In a highly controversial statement that followed his ouster at the hands of President Mohammed Mursi, former Egyptian Prosecutor General Abdel Meguid Mahmoud opened fire on the Muslim Brotherhood and unveiled long-hidden information he claimed to have known about the group throughout his career.

“Since I had started working as deputy prosecutor general, I noticed that members of the Muslim Brotherhood’s small cells were always the target of arrests while this was not the case with the group’s senior leaders,” Mahmoud said Saturday in a speech he delivered at the Cairo Judges Club where more than 10,000 judges met to condemn a new constitutional declaration issued by Mursi that undermines the independence of the judiciary.

In reference to the collaboration between the Muslim Brotherhood and the former regime, Mahmoud called upon the new prosecutor general, appointed by Mursi, to present a detailed account of all the cases against the Muslim Brotherhood stating which of them actually reached court and which were shelved.

“Brotherhood leaders know more than I do why many of them where not formally indicted,” he said.

Mahmoud accused Mursi of keeping information about state money retrieved from corruption cases by the General Prosecution Authority for two months in order to take all the credit.

“We got 11 billion (Egyptian) pounds back following investigations in corruption cases and the president only announced it two months after I informed him, so he could take the credit.”

Other amounts, he added, were also retrieved, some of which was before the Jan. 25, 2011 uprising which ousted former president Hosni Mubarak.

“We got back another 45 billion also from corruption, 18 billion of which were in 2006 and all those were deposited in the state’s treasury and I have all the documents to prove that.”

Mahmoud said that there were other corruption cases related to the privatization of 225 state-owned companies and he needed the files of these companies in order to start the investigation.

“I asked former Prime Minister Essam Sharaf to provide me with information about the assets of those companies, how they were sold, and where the money went and I did the same with current Prime Minister Hisham Kandil, but until my last day in office, I never received an answer.”

Mahmoud denied Muslim Brotherhood allegations about his collaboration with members of the Mubarak-era regime in the cases of the shooting of protestors.

“The General Prosecution Authority does not carry out investigations, but rather examines the investigations presented to it and deals with available evidence. We did not receive enough evidence in the cases of shooting protestors.”

The prosecution, he explained, asked former head of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forced (SCAF) Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi as well as the late Vice President Omar Suleiman to present police recordings on the days of the shootings and there was no response.

“Neither the police nor officials in office at the time cooperated with us. Therefore, we did not have the evidence that would indict the defendants.”

It is the president’s responsibility, Mahmoud noted, to summon former interior ministers and investigate the matter.

Mahmoud said he holds President Mohamed Mursi accountable for any harm that might befall him after his fiery speech.

“If anything happens to me after I am out of here, it will be the president’s responsibility.”

He also said he expected to be put in jail after his attack on the president and the Muslim Brotherhood.

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