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Exposed: The Mus­lim Broth­er­hood/Al-Qae­da Con­nec­tion
By Ray­mond Ibrahim on Feb­ru­ary 4, 2014 in From The Arab World
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As for­mer Egypt­ian Pres­i­dent Muham­mad Morsi’s tri­als con­tin­ue, it’s enlight­en­ing to con­sid­er what is like­ly to be one of the cen­ter­pieces of the tri­al: long­stand­ing accu­sa­tions that Mor­si and his Mus­lim Broth­er­hood par­ty worked with for­eign ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tions, includ­ing al-Qae­da, against the nation­al secu­ri­ty of Egypt.

Based on these accu­sa­tions of high trea­son, Mor­si and oth­ers could face the death penal­ty.

Con­cern­ing some of the more severe alle­ga­tions, one of Egypt’s most wide­ly dis­trib­uted and read news­pa­pers, Al Watan, recent­ly pub­lished what it said were record­ed con­ver­sa­tions between Mor­si and Muham­mad Zawahiri, al-Qae­da leader Ayman Zawahiri’s broth­er.

In these reports, Watan repeat­ed­ly asserts that Egypt­ian secu­ri­ty and intel­li­gence agen­cies con­firmed (or per­haps leaked out) the record­ings.

Much of the sub­stance of the alleged con­ver­sa­tions is fur­ther cor­rob­o­rat­ed by events that occurred dur­ing Morsi’s one-year-rule, most of which were report­ed by a vari­ety of Ara­bic media out­lets, though not by West­ern media.

In what fol­lows, I relay, sum­ma­rize, and trans­late some of the more sig­nif­i­cant por­tions of the Watan reports (ver­ba­tim state­ments are in quo­ta­tion marks). In between, I com­ment on var­i­ous anec­dotes and events—many of which were first bro­ken on my website—that now, in light of these phone con­ver­sa­tions, make per­fect sense and inde­pen­dent­ly help con­firm the authen­tic­i­ty of the record­ings.

—–

The first record­ed call between Muham­mad Mor­si and Muham­mad Zawahiri last­ed for 59 sec­onds. Mor­si con­grat­u­lat­ed Zawahiri on his release from prison, where he had been incar­cer­at­ed for jihadi/terrorist activ­i­ties against Egypt, and assured him that he would not be fol­lowed or observed by any Egypt­ian author­i­ties, and that he, Mor­si, was plan­ning on meet­ing with him soon. Pri­or to this first call, Refa’ al-Tahtawy, then Chief of Staff, medi­at­ed and arranged mat­ters.

The pres­i­den­tial palace con­tin­ued to com­mu­ni­cate reg­u­lar­ly with Muham­mad Zawahiri, and sources con­firm that he was the link between the Egypt­ian pres­i­den­cy and his broth­er, Ayman Zawahiri, the Egypt­ian-born leader of al-Qae­da.

It should be not­ed that, once released, the pre­vi­ous­ly lit­tle-known Muham­mad Zawahiri did become very vis­i­ble and vocal in Egypt, at times spear­head­ing the Islamist move­ment.

The next record­ing between Mor­si and Zawahiri last­ed for 2 min­utes and 56 sec­onds and took place one month after Mor­si became pres­i­dent. Mor­si informed Zawahiri that the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood sup­ports the mujahidin (jihadis) and that the mujahidin should sup­port the Broth­er­hood in order for them both, and the Islamist agen­da, to pre­vail in Egypt.

This makes sense in the con­text that, soon after Mor­si came to pow­er, the gen­er­al pub­lic did become increas­ing­ly crit­i­cal of him and his poli­cies, includ­ing the fact that he was plac­ing only Broth­er­hood mem­bers in Egypt’s most impor­tant posts, try­ing quick­ly to push through a pro-Islamist con­sti­tu­tion, and, as Egyp­tians called it, try­ing in gen­er­al to “Broth­er­hood­ize” Egypt.

This sec­ond phone call being longer than the first, Zawahiri took it as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to con­grat­u­late Mor­si on his recent pres­i­den­tial victory—which, inci­den­tal­ly, from the start, was por­trayed by some as fraudulent—and expressed his joy that Morsi’s pres­i­den­cy could only mean that “all sec­u­lar infi­dels would be removed from Egypt.”

Then Zawahiri told Mor­si: “Rule accord­ing to the Sharia of Allah [or “Islam­ic law”], and we will stand next to you. Know that, from the start, there is no so-called democ­ra­cy, so get rid of your oppo­si­tion.”

This asser­tion com­ports extreme­ly well with his broth­er Ayman Zawahiri’s views. A for­mer Mus­lim Broth­er­hood mem­ber him­self, some thir­ty years ago, the al-Qae­da leader wrote Al Hissad Al Murr (“The Bit­ter Har­vest”), a scathing book con­demn­ing the Broth­er­hood for “tak­ing advan­tage of the Mus­lim youths’ fer­vor by … steer[ing] their one­time pas­sion­ate, Islam­ic zeal for jihad to con­fer­ences and elec­tions.” An entire sec­tion ded­i­cat­ed to show­ing that Islam­ic Sharia can­not coex­ist with democ­ra­cy even appears in Ayman Zawahiri’s book (see “Sharia and Democ­ra­cy,” The Al Qae­da Read­er, pgs. 116–136).

The call end­ed in agree­ment that al-Qae­da would sup­port the Broth­er­hood, includ­ing its inter­na­tion­al branch­es, under the under­stand­ing that Mor­si would soon imple­ment full Sharia in Egypt. After this, Muham­mad Zawahiri and Khairat al-Shater, the num­ber-two man of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood orga­ni­za­tion, report­ed­ly met reg­u­lar­ly.

It is inter­est­ing to note here that, pri­or to these rev­e­la­tions, U.S. ambas­sador Anne Pat­ter­son was seen vis­it­ing with Khairat al-Shater—even though he held no posi­tion in the Mor­si government—and after the oust­ing and impris­on­ment of Mor­si and lead­ing Broth­er­hood mem­bers, Sens. John McCain and Lind­say Gra­ham made it a point to vis­it the civil­ian Shater in his prison cell and urged the Egypt­ian gov­ern­ment to release him.

The next call, record­ed rough­ly six weeks after this last one, again revolved around the theme of solid­i­fy­ing com­mon coop­er­a­tion between the Egypt­ian pres­i­den­cy and the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood on the one hand, and al-Qae­da and its jiha­di off­shoots on the oth­er, specif­i­cal­ly in the con­text of cre­at­ing jiha­di cells inside Egypt devot­ed to pro­tect­ing the increas­ing­ly unpop­u­lar Broth­er­hood-dom­i­nat­ed gov­ern­ment.

As I report­ed back in Decem­ber 2012, Egypt­ian media were say­ing that for­eign jiha­di fight­ers were appear­ing in large numbers—one said 3,000 fighters—especially in Sinai. And, since the over­throw of the Broth­er­hood and the mil­i­tary crack­down on its sup­port­ers, many of those detained have been exposed speak­ing non-Egypt­ian dialects of Ara­bic.

Dur­ing this same call, Zawahiri was also crit­i­cal of the Mor­si gov­ern­ment for still not apply­ing Islam­ic Sharia through­out Egypt, which, as men­tioned, was one of the pre­req­ui­sites for al-Qae­da sup­port.

Mor­si respond­ed by say­ing “We are cur­rent­ly in the stage of con­sol­i­dat­ing pow­er and need the help of all parties—and we can­not at this time apply the Iran­ian mod­el or Tal­iban rule in Egypt; it is impos­si­ble to do so now.”

In fact, while the Broth­er­hood has repeat­ed­ly declared its aspi­ra­tions for world dom­i­na­tion, from its ori­gins, it has always relied on a “grad­ual” approach, mov­ing only in stages, with the idea of cul­mi­nat­ing its full vision only when enough pow­er has been con­sol­i­dat­ed.

In response, Zawahiri told Mor­si that, as a show of good will, he must “at least release the mujahidin who were impris­oned dur­ing the Mubarak era as well as all Islamists, as an assur­ance and pact of coop­er­a­tion and proof that the old page has turned to a new one.”

After that call, and as con­firmed by a gov­ern­men­tal source, Mor­si received a list from Zawahiri con­tain­ing the names of the most dan­ger­ous ter­ror­ists in Egypt­ian jails, some of whom were on death row due to the enor­mi­ty of their crimes.

In fact, as I report­ed back in August 2012, many impris­oned ter­ror­ists, includ­ing from Egypt’s noto­ri­ous Islam­ic Jihad organization—which was once led by Ayman Zawahiri—were released under Mor­si.

One year lat­er, in August 2013, soon after the removal of Mor­si, Egypt’s Inte­ri­or Min­istry announced that Egypt was “prepar­ing to can­cel any pres­i­den­tial par­dons issued dur­ing Morsi’s era to ter­ror­ists or crim­i­nals.”

Dur­ing this same call, and in the con­text of par­dons, Mor­si said he would do his best to facil­i­tate the return of Muhammad’s infa­mous broth­er and al-Qae­da leader, Ayman Zawahiri, back to Egypt—“with his head held high,” in accor­dance with Islamist wishes—as well as urge the U.S. to release the “Blind Sheikh” and ter­ror­ist mas­ter­mind, Omar Abdul Rah­man.

In March 2013, I wrote about how Mor­si, dur­ing his Pak­istan vis­it, had report­ed­ly met with Ayman Zawahiri and made arrange­ments to smug­gle him back to Sinai. Accord­ing to a Pak­istan source, the meet­ing was “facil­i­tat­ed by ele­ments of Pak­istani intel­li­gence [ISI] and influ­en­tial mem­bers of the Inter­na­tion­al Orga­ni­za­tion, the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood.”

The gist of the next two calls between Mor­si and Muham­mad Zawahiri was that, so long as the for­mer is pres­i­dent, he would see to it that all released jihadis and al-Qae­da oper­a­tives are allowed to move freely through­out Egypt and the Sinai, and that the pres­i­den­tial palace would remain in con­stant con­tact with Zawahiri, to make sure every­thing is mov­ing to the sat­is­fac­tion of both par­ties.

Zawahiri fur­ther request­ed that Mor­si allow them to devel­op train­ing camps in Sinai in order to sup­port the Broth­er­hood through trained mil­i­tants. Along with say­ing that the Broth­er­hood intend­ed to form a “rev­o­lu­tion­ary guard” to pro­tect him against any coup, Mor­si added that, in return for al-Qaeda’s and its affil­i­ates’ sup­port, not only would he allow them to have such train­ing camps, but he would facil­i­tate their devel­op­ment in Sinai and give them four facil­i­ties to use along the Egypt­ian-Libyan bor­der.

That Libya is men­tioned is inter­est­ing. Accord­ing to a Libyan Ara­bic report I trans­lat­ed back in June 2013, those who attacked the U.S. con­sulate in Beng­hazi, killing Amer­i­cans, includ­ing Ambas­sador Chris Stevens, were from jiha­di cells that had been formed in Libya through Egypt­ian Mus­lim Broth­er­hood sup­port. Those inter­ro­gat­ed named Mor­si and oth­er top Broth­er­hood lead­er­ship as accom­plices.

More evidence—including some that impli­cates the U.S. administration—has mount­ed since then.

Next, Watan makes sev­er­al more asser­tions, all of which are pre­ced­ed by “accord­ing to security/intelligence agen­cies.” They are:

That Mor­si did indeed as he promised, and that he facil­i­tat­ed the estab­lish­ment of four jiha­di train­ing camps. Mor­si was then Chief in Com­mand of Egypt’s Armed Forces, and through his pow­er of author­i­ty, stopped the mil­i­tary from launch­ing any oper­a­tions includ­ing in the by now al-Qae­da over­run Sinai.
That, after Mor­si reached Pak­istan, he had a one-and-a-half hour meet­ing with an asso­ciate of Ayman Zawahiri in a hotel and pos­si­bly spoke with him.
That, after Mor­si returned to Egypt from his trip to Pak­istan, he issued anoth­er list con­tain­ing the names of 20 more con­vict­ed ter­ror­ists con­sid­ered dan­ger­ous to the nation­al secu­ri­ty of Egypt, giv­ing them all pres­i­den­tial pardons—despite the fact that nation­al secu­ri­ty and intel­li­gence strong­ly rec­om­mend­ed that they not be released on grounds of the threat they posed.
That the Mus­lim Brotherhood’s inter­na­tion­al wing, includ­ing through the agency of Khairat al-Shater, had pro­vid­ed $50 mil­lion to al-Qae­da in part to sup­port the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood in Egypt.

One of the longer con­ver­sa­tions between Mor­si and Zawahiri report­ed by Watan is espe­cial­ly telling of al-Qaeda’s enmi­ty for sec­u­lar­ist Mus­lims and Cop­tic Christians—whose church­es, some 80, were attacked, burned, and destroyed, some with the al-Qae­da flag furled above them, soon after the oust­ing of Mor­si. I trans­late por­tions below:

Zawahiri: “The teach­ings of Allah need to be applied and enforced; the sec­u­lar­ists have stopped the Islam­ic Sharia, and the response must be a stop to the build­ing of church­es.” (An odd asser­tion con­sid­er­ing how dif­fi­cult it already is for Copts to acquire a repair per­mit for their church­es in Egypt.)

Zawahiri also added that “All those who reject the Sharia must be exe­cut­ed, and all those belong­ing to the sec­u­lar media which work to dis­sem­i­nate debauch­ery and help deviants and Chris­tians to vio­late the Sharia, must be exe­cut­ed.”

Mor­si report­ed­ly replied: “We have tak­en deter­rent mea­sures to com­bat those few, and new leg­isla­tive mea­sures to lim­it their media, and in the near future, we will shut down these media sta­tions and launch large Islam­ic media out­lets. We are even plan­ning a big bud­get from the [Broth­er­hood] Inter­na­tion­al Group to launch Islam­ic and jiha­di satel­lite sta­tions to urge on the jihad. There will be a chan­nel for you and the men of al-Qae­da, and it can be broad­cast from Afghanistan.”

Unde­terred, Zawahiri respond­ed by say­ing, “This [is a] Chris­t­ian media—and some of the media per­son­nel are paid by the [Cop­tic] Church and they work with those who oppose the Sharia… sec­u­lar­ist forces are allied with Chris­t­ian forces, among them Naguib Sawiris, the Chris­t­ian-Jew.”

Mor­si: “Soon we will uphold our promis­es to you.”

In fact, there was a peri­od of time when the sec­u­lar media in Egypt—which was con­stant­ly expos­ing Broth­er­hood machinations—were under severe attack by the Broth­er­hood and Islamists of all stripes (come­di­an Bassem Youssef was the tip of the ice­berg). In one instance, which I not­ed back in August 2012, six major media sta­tions were attacked by Broth­er­hood sup­port­ers, their employ­ees severe­ly beat.

The last call record­ed between Muham­mad Mor­si and Muham­mad Zawahiri took place on the dawn of June 30, 2013 (the date of the June 30 Rev­o­lu­tion that oust­ed Mor­si and the Broth­er­hood). Mor­si made the call to Zawahiri in the pres­ence of Asad al-Sheikha, Deputy Chief of Pres­i­den­tial Staff, Refa’ al-Tahtawy, Chief of Pres­i­den­tial Staff, and his per­son­al secu­ri­ty.

Dur­ing this last call, Mor­si incit­ed Zawahiri to rise against the Egypt­ian mil­i­tary in Sinai and asked Zawahiri to com­pel all jiha­di and loy­al­ist ele­ments every­where to come to the aid of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and neu­tral­ize its oppo­nents.

Zawahiri report­ed­ly respond­ed by say­ing “We will fight the mil­i­tary and the police, and we will set the Sinai aflame.

True enough, as I report­ed on July 4, quot­ing from an Ara­bic report: “Al-Qae­da, under the lead­er­ship of Muham­mad Zawahiri, is cur­rent­ly plan­ning reprisal oper­a­tions by which to attack the army and the Mor­si-oppo­si­tion all around the Repub­lic [of Egypt].” The report added that, right before the depos­ing of Mor­si, Zawahiri had been arrest­ed and was being interrogated—only to be ordered released by yet anoth­er pres­i­den­tial order, and that he had since fled to the Sinai.

Also on that same first day of the rev­o­lu­tion, Khairat al-Shater, Deputy Leader of the Broth­er­hood, had a meet­ing with a del­e­gate of jiha­di fight­ers and reit­er­at­ed Morsi’s request that all jihadis come to the aid of the pres­i­den­cy and the Broth­er­hood.

—–

As Morsi’s tri­al con­tin­ues, it’s only a mat­ter of time before the truth of these allegations—and their impli­ca­tions for the U.S.—is known. But one thing is cer­tain: most of them com­port incred­i­bly well with inci­dents and events that took place under Morsi’s gov­ern­ment.