Court investigates Morsi over charges of leaking classified documents to Qatar

The Egyptian prosecutor, Hisham Barakat, ordered on Wednesday the investigation of former President Mohamed Morsi on charges that he leaked classified national security documents to Qatar, a judicial source has revealed.

The source, who preferred anonymity, told Anadolu news agency that “Morsi is being investigated on new charges of leaking classified documents to the State of Qatar during his tenure as President of the Republic between June 2012 and July 2013”. The source added that, “the investigators with the public prosecution visited Morsi on Wednesday in Burj Al-Arab prison, north of Alexandria, and notified him of the the charges.”

He pointed out that “the investigation includes a number of other Muslim Brotherhood leaders” as well, but did not disclose their names, and that “the prosecution has initiated extensive investigations of them.”

A source in President Morsi’s defence team said in remarks to Anadolu that, “The defence team was not informed about the investigation into our client today and we will prove later before the judicial authorities that the investigation has been conducted without the presence of the defence,” adding: “We expect that President Morsi, as usual, refused to respond to the charges and insisted on his position that what happened on 3 July 2013 was a coup and that he is still the legitimate president of the country.”

Legal sources close to the defence team said “senior officials in Morsi’s presidential team were summoned last week on the same charges, including the head of the presidential office at the time, Refaa Al-Tahtawi, and Morsi’s office manager, Ahmed Abdel Ati.”

Egypt’s Interior Minister General Mohammad Ibrahim announced on 30 March, during a press conference, that the Egyptian authorities were investigating a “new espionage case involving Morsi, along with his presidential aides, in cooperation with the intelligence services of an Arab country.”

The Egyptian prosecution on 12 July extended the imprisonment of five defendants for 15 additional days, all accused of seizing classified documents and reports related to the Egyptian army in order to pass them to a foreign state. Anadolu reported the list of defendants to include Amin Al-Serafy and his daughter Kareema, Mohamed Adel Hamid Kelany, an air host, as well as four Muslim Brotherhood members, namely: Ahmed Ismail Thabet, Ahmed Abdo, Ali Afifi and Khaled Hamdy Radwan.

The investigation report stated that: “The senior Muslim Brotherhood member, Ameen Serafy, in his capacity as secretary of the presidency, smuggled these documents from the state’s safe to a Muslim Brotherhood office in order to send them to the intelligence service of a foreign state which supports the organisation’s international schemes to undermine Egypt’s security and stability.”

Furthermore, the report said “Serafy handed the documents over to his daughter Kareema and went into hiding after the other defendants were arrested, before he was caught on 17 December 2013.”

Morsi and 14 others are already being tried on charges including incitement to kill three protesters opposed to the Muslim Brotherhood on 5 December 2012 outside the Federal Presidential Palace, east of Cairo. The incident also witnessed the killing of several members of the Muslim Brotherhood, which is not under investigation.

Morsi is also being tried in another three cases: the first case involves him and another 35 defendants accused of spying for the Palestinian Hamas movement, the Lebanese Hezbollah party and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard; the second case involves him and another 131 defendants, including Muslim Brotherhood leaders and 71 Palestinians with the Hamas movement on charges of breaking into Egyptian prisons during the 25 January revolution in 2011; and a third case involving Morsi and others, including media personality and politicians, on charges of insulting the judiciary.