Egyptians call for El-Baradei’s citizenship to be revoked

A military leader may be great in the army but unable to run a country, leading Egyptian opposition figure Mohamed El Baradei said in a controversial interview with Al-Araby TV.

In an apparent attack on Egyptian President Abdel Fattah, El Baradie said: “A graduate of the armed forces can be a great commander but he won’t know how to run the Ministry of Education.”

“The logical sequence is that authoritarian rule creates extremist groups,” he added.

Clips from the interview have caused an online storm. Pro-Sisi Egyptians took to social media to call for the opposition figure’s nationality to be revoked.

“We have to take the nationality away from any traitor or agent. We have the right to do that to any dog who tries to break up his homeland,” one Twitter user wrote.

El Baradei, a former vice-president, resigned from his post in 2013 to protest against the Rabaa massacre where around 1,000 peaceful protesters were gunned down whilst demonstrating against the military coup.

According to producer, Abdelmoneim Mahmoud: “state security has warned advertising companies to not run ads during the episodes of the interview.”

“It has also sent out the message that the interviews should not be covered in local media in either a positive or negative light,” Mahmoud explained in a Facebook post.

The interview comes as a popular Egyptian talk show was taken off air for being overly critical of Sisi’s government.