On Saturday, an Egyptian judge sentenced three Al Jazeera English journalists—Mohamed Fahmy, Baher Mohamed, and Peter Greste—to at least three years in prison on trumped up charges that have been the subject of much criticism since the men were arrested two years ago in December.
On Saturday, an American citizen, Mohamed Soltan, was sentenced to life imprisonment in Egypt for his support of an Islamist protest in the summer of 2013, the New York Times reports. The presiding judge sentenced more than 35 other defendants in the case to the same penalty, while fourteen senior members of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood were sentenced to death, Reuters reports.
The deputy head of the Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan, Zaki Bani Rushaid, sentenced on Sunday to 18 months in prison for "acts harmful to the country's relations with a friendly nation," the New York Times reports. In November, Bani Rushaid had posted a message critical of the United Arab Emirates, one of Jordan's regional allies, to his personal Facebook page.
Abdullah Elshamy, an Al Jazeera reporter who has been in jail in Egypt on trumped-up charges for nearly a year, has been ordered released on account of his failing health, and judging from before-and-after photos of Elshamy, it's clear that his release is an urgent matter.
On Monday, an Egyptian court issued a ruling that banned the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. The Cairo Court for Urgent Matters applied the ruling to the Islamist group's non-governmental group, its recently formed political party, and any groups affiliated with or receiving financial support from the organization.
The U.S. has reportedly cut all aid to Egypt, but hasn't yet publicly declared the military removal of democratically elected president Mohamed Morsi a coup—even as the new government continues its crackdown on Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood, to the point of arresting its 70-year-old leader Mohamed Badie.
Almost a thousand supporters of former Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi took refuge inside a mosque overnight, after becoming surrounded by government security forces. The tense situation finally came to a head only moments ago, when security forces fired tear gas into the mosque, and began dragging people out, amid reports of gunfire. The BBC is now reporting that all protesters have been cleared from the mosque, and the majority have been arrested.
It's been a week since Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi was removed from power by the military, and something odd has happened: There aren't any lines for gas, and electric power is consistently on.
Late-night violence at the site of a sit-in held by supporters of ousted Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi left at least 42 dead—nearly all protesters—and over 300 wounded, and led the right-wing Salafist party Al Nour to suspend its participation in the army's "roadmap" for transition.
For most of the afternoon Sunday, the open roof deck at the InterContinental Cairo Semiramis hotels had two sunbathers and a young boy swimming in the Olympic size pool by himself. Six stories down, and 200 hundred yards away, on Abd El-Quader Hamza street, reckless policemen (aka the Central Security Force, or CSF) were launching tear-gas shells against the multiple protesters who were hurling rocks back at them.
Pamela Geller, the most vocal of the activists opposed to the so-called "Ground Zero Mosque" to be built two blocks from the former site of the World Trade Center, said Friday that the Conservative Political Action Conference she was speaking at had itself been "corrupted" and "compromised by Muslim Brotherhood activists."
