Catching a big fish

Yesterday, the governing military authority of Egypt added a new crime to the series of crimes it committed since staging the coup in July 2013. They assassinated Muslim Brotherhood leader Dr Mohammed Kamal, a member of the group’s Guidance and Shura councils, along with his companion.

They were ambushed as they were on their way to a hospital, as Kamal suffered from heart problems, where they were arrested and pulled from their car. They were killed two hours later according to a statement made by the interior ministry.

The ministry claimed that they resisted arrest and then opened fire on police officers, although no injuries to the police officers were reported. Also, one wonders how they were arrested without putting up a fight, only to then engage in a gun battle and then be declared dead two hours later.

The suspicious circumstances indicate that killing Kamal was the goal all along. In fact, extrajudicial killings have become a method adopted systematically by the police. I am certain that they receive their orders for such killings from the leader of the coup himself, Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi.

When he was defence minister, Al-Sisi said during a meeting with other army officers that he would not prosecute any soldier or police officer if they killed or wounded any citizen, which was the case after the 25 January Revolution. This is why all the officers who were tried after the revolution were acquitted, even policeman Mohamed Al-Sunni who was accused of killing 12 civilians during the revolution.

The decision to physically liquidate individuals was made a while ago in order to ease the burden on the juridical departments who also receive orders for verdicts and sentencing before cases are heard, commonly known in Egypt as reaching a verdict after a phone call rather than after judicial deliberation.

This wasn’t the first time that an individual was liquidated in this manner, as 11 Brotherhood officials were killed inside a flat in the 6 October neighbourhood during Ramadan 2015. In addition to this, an engineering student at Ain Shams University was killed, only for authorities to claim that he was killed during an exchange of fire with security forces. In reality, he was forced out of an examination hall, before the eyes and ears of his colleagues and teachers, who all testified to this.

The significance of Kamal’s assassination is the fact that he is a member of the Guidance Council and that no one had dared commit such an act before, except for in the case of the martyr Imam Hassan Al-Banna, the founder of the Brotherhood, during the reign of King Farouk in 1949.

Kamal different from the older generation of Brotherhood leaders, and held a different opinion of the revolutionary youth in the group than was held by the group’s elders. He, like the youth, believed that the 25 January Revolution was an emergency event and therefore the group should not bemoan the losses it suffered over the past three years.

He also believed that Egypt was the headquarters for a group that is present across the world, and Kamal and the youth believe there is a need to continue the revolution. This is the basis of the clash between him and the other “old school” front represented by Mahmoud Ezzat.

This is why the illegitimate Al-Sisi government got rid of him by killing him, and they consider their murder as them catching a big fish. We do not yet know what Kamal was planning for the future, or what the security forces gained from this killing.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.