MORSI’S SON SAYS BANNED FROM VISITING HIS FATHER IN PRISON

Cairo, 23 Muharram 1435/27 November 2013 (MINA) – Osama Morsi, son of ousted President Mohamed Morsi, said on Tuesday (26/11) that armed forces troops prevented him from visiting his father at Borg al-Arab Prison without clarifying legal reasons.

“We went as family on the legal time to visit the abducted president. However, the prison administration prevented us without legal reason,” Osama told Freedom and Justice website as quoted by Egypt Independent and Mi’raj News Agency (MINA).

Osama said he headed to the prison accompanied by his younger brother Abdullah, the media added.

On Facebook, Osama said, “Military troops prevented me from visiting the president without showing legal evidence. The kidnapped president’s steadfastness continues.”

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Morsi was taken to Borg al-Arab prison in Alexandria after his first trial in 14 November was delayed until next January.

Egypt’s military ousted the first freely elected president on July 3, and detained Morsi under Army’s tight security in unknown place but then moved him after his first public appearance in the mid of November.

The son of ousted president Mohamed Morsi said he was “proud” of his father’s refusal to wear a government-issued prison suit to his first court appearance. “You fill me with honor and make me raise my head high,” Osama Morsi said.

Meanwhile, a leader of the National Alliance for the Defense of Legitimacy, Morsi’s main support bloc, said the fact that Morsi had refused to wear the detention suit and had entered the courtroom calmly and with a smile showed that the ousted president was “putting the military coup on trial” rather than the other way around.

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Ali Khafagi told that the way Morsi had entered the courtroom indicated his determination to fight his July 3 ouster by the military.

He thanked Morsi and other defendants in the case for flashing the “Rabaa sign” in a show of solidarity with the hundreds of peaceful protesters killed in mid-August when security forces violently dispersed a pro-democracy sit-in in Cairo. “They stand against oppression and despotism,” Khafagi said of the defendants. (T/P03/P04).

Mi’raj News Agency (MINA)