Arab media outlets on Tuesday reported that former Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi was buried in the presence of his family and his lawyer in a cemetery in Cairo’s Nasr City district.
Nasr City (Nasr means victory in Arabic) is located east of the Cairo Governorate and consists mostly of condos. It was established in the 1960s as an extension of the affluent suburb of Heliopolis. It was part of the Egyptian Government’s plan to modernize and expand Cairo following the revolution of 1952. President Gamal Abdel Nasser was involved personally in the project.
The burial in this district that’s so deeply associated with the militaristic Egyptian system which has persecuted Morsi’s Moslem Brotherhood movement was a blatant rejection of the late president’s family’s request to bury him in his native Nile Delta province of Sharqiya.
The last thing President al-Sisi needs is a shrine to Morsi some 80 miles away from Cairo, to be frequented by enemies of the regime.
Egyptian state television on Monday reported that Morsi had collapsed during a court hearing in Cairo on espionage charges, and later died of a heart attack.
Critics of the government blamed the his death on the conditions of his incarceration. Mohamed Sudan, a London-based prominent Muslim Brotherhood spokesman, said that Morsi’s death was “premeditated murder.”
Crispin Blunt, who had led a panel of British parliamentarians who reviewed the conditions Morsi endured in jail, said, “We feared that if Dr. Morsi was not provided with urgent medical assistance, the damage to his health may be permanent and possibly terminal,” concluding: “sadly, we have been proved right.”
The deposed president was diabetic and was kept in jail for the past six years.
Israeli Arabs, including those who do not identify with the Muslim Brotherhood’s path and even oppose it, have posted messages of support and solidarity in the wake of Morsi’s death, condemning the brutality of the Egyptian regime. MK Mtanes Shehadeh, leader of the Arab Balad party, tweeted that even those who disagree with Morsi’s path cannot stand by and not condemn “the terrible crimes of the military regime in Egypt.”
“What happened to Morsi is a crime against humanity and against the Arab peoples,” he stated.