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Morsi Calls Trial in Egypt ‘Illegitimate,’ and Case Is Delayed Egypt’s Ex-President Is Defiant at Murder Trial
(about 13 hours later)
CAIRO — As Egypt’s new military-led government consolidates its power, Mohamed Morsi, the deposed president, went on trial on Monday, facing charges of inciting the murder of protesters, but he rejected the court’s authority and proclaimed himself to be the country’s legitimate ruler. CAIRO — Held incommunicado for the four months since his overthrow as president, Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood walked into a makeshift courtroom on Monday for his new role as a defendant in a murder trial.
The trial got off to a late start, and the case was soon adjourned until Jan. 8. But Mr. Morsi, dressed in a blue suit, refused even to wear the usual all-white prisoner’s costume.
The trial’s brief opening was Mr. Morsi’s first public appearance since his removal from office on July 3 and, in a dizzying turn for Egypt, the second criminal trial of a former head of state in less than three years. Former President Hosni Mubarak, ousted in February 2011 and now under house arrest in a military hospital, is facing a retrial at the same site, the auditorium of a police academy. “I want a microphone so I can talk to you,” Mr. Morsi shouted three times from a special defendant’s cage constructed to obscure him from public view. “There is a military coup in the country,” he shouted, adding, “I am the president of the republic, according to the Constitution of the state, and I am forcibly detained!”
According to the website of Al Ahram, Egypt’s flagship state newspaper, the trial got under way as Mr. Morsi and 14 other Islamist defendants appeared in a caged dock and court officials called out their names. But news reports said the hearing was first delayed and then suspended after Mr. Morsi refused to dress in prison clothing and chants by his co-defendants drowned out the proceedings. Repeatedly cited by the new government as evidence of its adherence to the rule of law, the trial instead threatened to embarrass its leadership, with the defendants and their lawyers seizing a rare platform to question the military takeover. Islamists around Egypt were galvanized by Mr. Morsi’s show of defiance as the judge failed to gavel him into silence and instead adjourned the trial for two months.
Journalists who were allowed into the courtroom were not permitted to take telephones or other communications devices, limiting the flow of information. But witnesses in the courtroom said that Mr. Morsi declared, “This trial is illegitimate,” and said he was still Egypt’s lawful president. And the timing, analysts said, also proved awkward for Secretary of State John Kerry. On a visit to Cairo just a day before, he had said that — despite a series of mass killings of protesters, the shutdown of opposition news media outlets and apparently politicized trials like Mr. Morsi’s — “there are indications” that the generals who ousted Egypt’s first freely elected president intended to restore democracy.
Mr. Morsi’s Islamist allies in the Muslim Brotherhood had called for major protests against the trial, and the Interior Ministry said it had deployed thousands of riot police officers to secure the streets. Shortly before 11 a.m., as the trial began, the streets remained quiet, but the number of demonstrators began to grow from only a few dozen to perhaps 100 in two locations outside the court. The visit was “unbelievable timing,” said Michael Wahid Hanna, an Egypt scholar at the Century Foundation in New York. He argued that opponents of the Islamists would see the trip as an American effort to protect Mr. Morsi, while Islamists would hear Mr. Kerry’s “soft and optimistic statements as a U.S. blessing to the new military-led political order.”
Pro-Morsi demonstrators gathered in larger numbers at the Supreme Constitutional Court in the Maadi district of southern Cairo, witnesses said. It was the second criminal prosecution of an ousted Egyptian president in the same venue within less than three years. But in a reversal of the dynamic during the live broadcast of Hosni Mubarak’s trial in 2011, on Monday the hearing quickly devolved into a tug of war over just how much attention Mr. Morsi could receive. “Mubarak was hiding from the cameras, and now they are hiding the cameras from Morsi,” said Emad Shahin, a political scientist at the American University in Cairo, who called the new government’s rush to trial “a miscalculation” because “this will increase the perception of him as a hero, an icon for the resistance.”
For the new government installed by Gen. Abdul-Fattah el-Sisi, the trial will be a ritual demonstration of its repeated assurances that there will be no turning back from the overthrow of Mr. Morsi or from the cancellation of the Islamist-drafted constitution approved in December in a national referendum. The court proceedings add formal legal legitimacy to Mr. Morsi’s incarceration, analysts said, so that it is no longer by military fiat alone. Ahmed el-Arainy, 42, a Brotherhood organizer, called the opening of the trial “a good day.”
He is charged with inciting the murders of at least three protesters in a night of street fighting between his supporters and opponents outside the presidential palace in December. But rights advocates say the charges are selective at best. “They just wanted to show him shaken in a cage, a defendant in prison clothes, but, God bless him, he stood in defense of his cause and not theirs,” he said. “What is on trial is the country, and its will to change,” he added.
As increasingly aggressive protesters began encircling the palace the night before the protesters were killed — even throwing Molotov cocktails over its walls — the police refused to protect it. So on Dec. 5, leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood publicly called for the president’s Islamist supporters to do the job themselves, by force if necessary. Along with 14 Islamist allies or presidential staff members named as defendants, Mr. Morsi was charged with inciting the murders of at least three protesters. If convicted, any of the defendants could face the death penalty.
Hundreds of Islamists arrived that afternoon and forcibly evicted a small encampment the protesters had set up near the palace, and by nightfall thousands of Islamists were gathered to defend the site. Thousands of Mr. Morsi’s opponents attacked the Islamists, and a night of deadly street fighting ensued, with rocks, Molotov cocktails and gunshots coming from both sides. Only six of his fellow defendants appeared in court with him, including the prominent Brotherhood leaders Essam el-Erian and Mohamed el-Beltagy.
By morning, at least 11 people were dead, including at least eight supporters of the president and at least three non-Islamists, according to news reports. Prosecutors have not charged anyone over the Islamists’ deaths, and the charges against Mr. Morsi are related to the killing of three non-Islamists. Journalists were allowed into the courtroom, but they were barred from bringing cameras, recording devices or telephones, so that Egyptian state news media was the only one to control audio or video clips.
Mr. Morsi’s supporters committed other abuses as the night went on, informally detaining and beating a number of his opponents they had captured in the fight. In the morning, the Islamists sought to turn their detainees over to prosecutors, to charge them with assaulting the presidential palace, but the prosecutors immediately released them. Mr. Morsi may also be charged in relation to those detentions by his civilian supporters. Many of the Egyptian journalists who were allowed inside the trial chanted repeatedly for Mr. Morsi’s execution.
Mr. Morsi has been held incommunicado since his ouster, without access to his lawyer. A legal team preparing to represent him has said that he has spoken at least twice with his family over the telephone. But his supporters have said that they do not recognize the authority of the court, deeming the current military-backed government illegal and illegitimate. Rights advocates said the most serious charges appeared both selective and difficult to prove. All involve a bloody night of street fighting last December between thousands of Mr. Morsi’s Islamist supporters and their opponents outside the presidential palace.
Mr. Mubarak’s removal from office, in contrast, was given a degree of legal legitimacy when his vice president, Omar Suleiman, announced Mr. Mubarak’s resignation. Initially placed under house arrest by the military at his beach house in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, Mr. Mubarak was eventually charged with corruption as well as with directing security forces in the killing of hundreds of unarmed protesters during the 18-day uprising that ended his rule. In the nights before the deaths occurred, increasingly aggressive protesters had begun encircling the presidential palace — some throwing firebombs over its walls. But the police refused to protect the palace. (Police leaders now boast that they never obeyed Mr. Morsi.) So on Dec. 5, leaders of the Brotherhood publicly called for the president’s Islamist supporters to do the job themselves, by force if necessary.
Mr. Mubarak was allowed to consult with a legal team that included Egypt’s most prominent defense lawyer. He was acquitted of the corruption charges on technical grounds, and he now faces a retrial on the charges related to the protesters’ deaths. Mr. Mubarak was convicted of those charges in the final weeks of military rule before Mr. Morsi’s election, but the judge all but openly stated that he was convicting Mr. Mubarak for political reasons. Hundreds of Islamists arrived that afternoon and forcibly evicted a small encampment the protesters had set up near the palace but without causing significant injuries. By nightfall, thousands of Islamists had streamed in to defend the site.
An appellate court ordered a retrial, and another judge ordered Mr. Mubarak released from prison. But the new government has kept him under house arrest in a military hospital for unspecified reasons related to public security. After dark, thousands of Mr. Morsi’s opponents marched to the palace to retaliate against the Islamists. A night of street fighting ensued, and thrown rocks, firebombs and gunshots were flying from both sides.

Alan Cowell contributed reporting from London.

Eight of Mr. Morsi’s supporters were killed, and no one has been charged in their deaths. Mr. Morsi and his co-defendants are accused of ordering the killing of three non-Islamists who died on the other side of the fight, though the identities of the killers remain unknown.
A lawyer for Ahmed Abdelatty, who worked as an administrator for Mr. Morsi and was also charged with the murders, noted in court on Monday that many Egyptians had been killing one another without any encouragement. “How can you say that the office manager of the president of the republic is responsible for the death of this person or that person?”
But the prosecutors insisted that the defendants were guilty of “premeditated murder.”
“They had the intention and the determination to murder anybody who would stand in the way of the dispersal of the sit-in,” prosecutors said, reading charges.
Other allegations involve abuses that took place as the street battle raged on. Mr. Morsi’s supporters captured, beat and interrogated dozens of his opponents. In the morning, the Islamists sought to turn them over to prosecutors, expecting criminal charges for assaulting the palace. But the prosecutors immediately released them.
Prosecutors said Monday that they would also charge Mr. Morsi with conspiring in those detentions.
Thousands of opponents of the military takeover demonstrated in two locations near major courts in Cairo, and thousands more demonstrated in other cities. Clashes with the police and several injuries were reported in Alexandria.
Islamist-led demonstrations against the takeover have continued at least weekly in most cities around the country. But on Monday those in Cairo appeared to be dispersing by the time that trial came to a close in the early afternoon.
At 1:35 p.m., a cheer rose up outside the court as a helicopter lifted off to transport Mr. Morsi from the trial, in a police academy auditorium. He was taken to a prison in Alexandria, Egyptian state news media said.
State news media reported that for the first time, Mr. Morsi was being treated like an ordinary prisoner, forced to submit to the standard admissions checkup and wear the standard prison jumpsuit.
By nighttime, state television was broadcasting a short, silent video clip of Mr. Morsi in a defendant’s cage. The website of the flagship state newspaper, Al Ahram, reported the diagnosis given by a psychologist that Mr. Morsi’s refusal to wear prison clothes suggested “attempts to deny reality,” suggesting “he is unable to bear the pain of loss and failure.”
Another said that his smile “shows the weakness of his self-confidence,” according to the newspaper, while the applause of his supporters demonstrated “the rigidity of their thought, because they only do what they are told.”