Egypt Decrees That Pro-Morsi Sit-Ins Be Dispersed

CAIRO — Egypt’s military-led government instructed its security forces on Wednesday to end two large sit-ins in the capital by supporters of the deposed Islamist president, a decree that risked a new round of violent convulsions in the country’s political crisis.

In a televised statement, the interim cabinet said that the sit-ins in support of the deposed president, Mohamed Morsi, were disruptive and represented “a threat to the Egyptian national security and an unacceptable terrorizing of citizens.”

Tens of thousands of Muslim Brotherhood members and sympathizers have been occupying two large squares in Cairo — Rabaa Al Adaweya and Nahdet Masr — to protest the July 3 ouster of Mr. Morsi, the country’s first freely elected president. The protesters have vowed to stay in the squares until he is released from detention and reinstated in office. That outcome has looked increasingly unlikely, as the interim authorities have expanded a crackdown on the Brotherhood and its affiliates and have moved to oust Islamists appointed by Mr. Morsi from government posts. 

More than 140 pro-Morsi demonstrators in Cairo were killed by security forces in violent confrontations on July 8 and this past Saturday, further polarizing a country in the throes of its worst crisis since the revolution that toppled Mr. Morsi’s autocratic predecessor, Hosni Mubarak, in February 2011.

The interim cabinet’s televised statement, read by the country’s minister of media, Doreyya Sharaf el-Din, appeared intended to establish a legal basis for dispersing the sit-ins by force. The minister said the decree was necessary because of “the huge mandate given to the state by the people in dealing with the terrorism and the violence that threaten the dissolution of the state and the collapse of the homeland, and in order to protect the national security and higher interest of the country and the social peace and the safety of citizens.”

She said the Interior Ministry had been instructed “to take all the necessary measures in that regard within the framework of the provisions of the Constitution and the law.” 

The decree came shortly after the interim authorities announced they had referred the top spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, Mohamed Badie, and two other senior Islamist figures to a criminal court on charges of incitement to murder. The step was seen as a further expansion of the crackdown on the Brotherhood.

Mr. Morsi has been detained by the military since he was overthrown and his whereabouts kept secret. Only a trickle of visitors have been allowed to see him, and he has been not allowed to communicate with his family or his supporters.

Mayy El Sheikh reported from Cairo, and Rick Gladstone from New York. Kareem Fahim contributed reporting from Cairo.