Egypt accused the United Nations on Wednesday of seeking to
“politicise” the death of the country’s first democratically
elected president Mohamed Morsi by calling for an “independent
inquiry”.
Foreign ministry spokesman Ahmed Hafez said he condemned “in the
strongest terms” the call by the spokesman for the UN High
Commissioner for Human Rights, Rupert Colville, for an independent
investigation into Morsi’s death during a court hearing on
Monday.
Hafez said it was a “deliberate attempt to politicise a case of
natural death.”
Colville called Tuesday for a probe into whether the conditions
Morsi faced during his nearly six years in custody had contributed
to his death.
“Any sudden death in custody must be followed by a prompt,
impartial, thorough and transparent investigation carried out by an
independent body to clarify the cause of death,” he said.
“Concerns have been raised regarding the conditions of Mr
Morsi’s detention, including access to adequate medical care, as
well as sufficient access to his lawyers and family,” Colville
added.
He said the investigation must “encompass all aspects of the
authorities’ treatment of Mr Morsi to examine whether the
conditions of his detention had an impact on his death.”
Morsi was toppled by then army chief, now President Abdel Fattah
al-Sisi in 2013 after a single divisive year in power. He was later
charged with an array of offences including espionage.
Since his ouster, authorities have waged an ongoing crackdown on
dissent of all kinds that has seen thousands of Brotherhood
supporters jailed and hundreds facing death sentences.
A group of British parliamentarians in March 2018 warned Morsi’s
detention conditions, particularly inadequate treatment for his
diabetes and liver disease, could trigger “premature death”.
(AFP)
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