A television channel chief and presenter
denied calling for the murder of President Mohamed Mursi when his trial on
incitement charges opened in the Egyptian capital today.
"I
merely criticised President Mursi," Tawfiq Okasha told judges at the court
appearance, the news agency journalist reported
"This
is a political trial. The
Muslim Brotherhood wants to silence all dissent and reproduce the system from
before the revolution," he said.
Okasha
added that he was in the dock for "revealing the Brotherhood's involvement in
attacks on police stations, courts and prisons during the revolution" in 2011.
Okasha's
Al-Faraeen channel, suspended on August 16, aired a show that was stridently
anti-Mursi and anti-Muslim Brotherhood, the party from which the leader
emanates.
The
charges against him came at the same time that Islam Afifi, the editor of small
independent newspaper Al-Dustour, was accused of spreading false news and
inciting disorder.
Okasha
arrived at court surrounded by his supporters who chanted "The people want
Al-Faraeen!"
The
court set the next session of the trial for October 3 after hearing the case for
the defence, which argued that the complaints against Okasha were not filed by
Mursi personally.
Both
Okasha and Afifi were banned from leaving the country in August.
Afifi
was freed after spending several hours in custody on the day of his trial, after
a decree signed by Mursi scrapped preventive detention for alleged publishing
crimes.
Afifi
was the first journalist to go on trial since the overthrow of veteran strongman
Hosni Mubarak in February last year.
After
his inauguration on June 30, Mursi moved to bolster his power over the
influential military and a state media that had been hostile towards his once
banned but powerful movement.
He
got the Muslim Brotherhood-dominated upper house of parliament to name new
editors-in-chief for state media that had been hostile to him and the Islamist
group.
Mursi's
opponents accuse him of seeking to muzzle the press, and there has also been
international concern.
US
State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said that the prosecutions of
Okasha and Afifi ran counter to the spirit of last year's revolution.(
No comments:
Post a Comment