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Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood Leader Calls for U.S. Embassy Siege

By C. J. Refsland on July 24, 2013 • ( 0 )

My comment: So the president say’s everything is safe. I remember another time when they attacked the embassy in Cairo, and Benghazi. And it’s come out that the brotherhood was responsible for that too. So we should believe the president why? Remember this?

(News Max) A Muslim Brotherhood leader is calling on Egyptians to lay siege to the U.S Embassy in Cairo to protest what he said was American support for the ouster of Islamist President Mohamed Mursi.

U.S. diplomats should leave Egypt, Essam El-Erian told Brotherhood supporters yesterday in Cairo’s Nasr City suburb, where they’ve been staging a sit-in since Mursi’s July 3 removal by the army. He said he hoped they wouldn’t be harmed. The U.S., which gives more than $1 billion a year to the Egyptian military, hasn’t labeled the army’s intervention as a coup, though it has called for a quick transition to democracy.

One person was killed and seven injured yesterday during clashes between Mursi supporters and opponents in Tahrir Square in Cairo, state television reported. Pro-Mursi demonstrators also fought with opponents near the Defense Ministry, the state- run Middle East News Agency reported.

Daily protests by the deposed leader’s supporters risk undermining the army-installed government’s plan for a transition back to elected civilian rule. That plan got under way July 21 with the first meeting of a panel charged with amending the constitution drawn up under Mursi and approved in a referendum in December.

Even before El-Erian’s remarks, Egyptian police had set up barriers around the U.S. Embassy in central Cairo. The compound was the scene of fighting between demonstrators and police in September, shortly before the American ambassador to Libya and three fellow nationals were killed in an attack on the consulate in Benghazi.

The embassy and all roads leading to it are totally secure and the government won’t allow it to be attacked, said Adel- Fattah Osman, assistant to the interior minister. Calls to the embassy’s media department yesterday weren’t answered.

The protest there may be a “calculated escalation” and the Brotherhood will probably try to avoid violence, said Mustapha Al-Sayyid, a professor of politics at Cairo University. “It’s seeking the support of foreign governments, and violence will lead them to support the current interim government.”

In Washington, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said yesterday that the U.S. government was assessing the safety of American officials serving in Egypt.

“We have taken steps and would take steps as needed if the situation warrants,” Psaki told reporters during a briefing.

The U.S. is still conducting a review requested by President Barack Obama into whether Mursi’s removal was a coup, Psaki said, without offering a timetable for its completion. U.S law requires ending aid to any county where the government has been toppled by a military coup.