Note: This guest column was written by the man who filed Complaint No. 1761 with the office of Egypt’s Attorney General in which Malik Obama is accused of supporting terrorism in Egypt. Our decision to post Dr. Ebeid’s column should not be interpreted as an endorsement of all of his views.
By Sadek Raouf Ebeid, MD
Egyptian Air Force Officer / U.S. Physician
When it comes to the truth behind the removal of Mohammed Mursi from power on July 3, 2013, a secret must be told about what set that momentous event in motion.
The Judicial branch of every nation should be one its people take pride in. As an Egyptian American, I am no exception. Egypt’s judges are part of a system that has been around for thousands of years; most of them are very courageous.
Sometimes it is best to make your point by comparing and contrasting two cases. Let’s take a look at the case of a sitting president in Egypt and that of the uncle of a sitting president in the U.S.
The first case was handled in early 2013 by honorable Egyptian Judge Mr. Khaled Mohamad Mahgoub. The second case was handled more recently by the honorable American Judge Mr. Leonard Shapiro.
Justice Khalid Mahgoub.
In Mahgoub’s case, he was presiding over a case in Ismailia, Egypt. It had to do with the escape of an unknown prisoner from Wadi el Natroun prison, near Alexandria. The judge could not help but notice that one of the prisoners on the list was the name of a man Mahgoub knew very well; it belonged to a man he saw on television every day.
That name was Mohammed Mursi, who was residing in Egypt’s Presidential Palace, the equivalent of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in the U.S.
Judge Mahgoub learned that Mursi, along with 34 other prisoners – many of whom held the highest levels of authority within the executive branch of the Egyptian government – had escaped from prison. Complicating matters was the fact that one of the guards was murdered during the prison break, which meant serious charges would be brought against all men if Mahgoub did the right thing. Doing so, however, would put him in grave danger.
Judge Mahgoub is an extremely observant and devout Muslim. His father was the head of the Islamic Sharia law in Ain Shams University in Cairo. He decided to look towards heaven and pray, “Thy will be done”.
They say every man faces his moment of truth. For Judge Mahgoub, that moment came the next day, when he made an unprecedented and very brave legal move.
He issued a court order, mandating that the prosecutor add the name of Egypt’s Acting President, along with the 34 other rulers of Egypt to the list of defendants. He further ordered that the sitting president be tried in the highest court in the land for participating in this prison break.
Tahani Al-Jebali, the former Chancellor of the Constitutional Court of Egypt, said on national television after Mahgoub’s decision, that Mursi had lost his legitimacy as President of Egypt, as a consequence of that decision. Al-Jebali is the same Justice who spoke out publicly against President Barack Obama’s brother Malik, accusing him of being a Muslim Brotherhood operative.
Tahani al-Jebali: Backed up Mahgoub.
Mahgoub knew that due to the death of the guard during the break, he was ordering the prosecutor to demand the death penalty for the sitting president of Egypt.
Today, that ruling is seen as the initial spark that led the Egyptian Judicial system to raise the red card in the face of Mursi. Just a few months later, 30 million Egyptians took to the streets and demanded that Mursi go. Today, ex-president Mursi is on trial, thanks in large part to the actions of one man who thumbed his nose at the path of least resistance.
As for the second case, the honorable Judge Mr. Leonardo Shapiro was deciding the fate of a Kenyan citizen who was arrested for Driving Under the Influence (DUI) and was found to be legally drunk. The U.S. prosecutor added that the driver was an alien whose U.S. visa had expired many years earlier.
The honorable Judge Shapiro told the defendant, “Congratulations. Welcome to America.”
That defendant was Mr. Onyango ‘Omar’ Obama.
Onyango Obama: Welcomed into the U.S. after DUI.
My close Mexican friends in Arizona have said things to me like:
“If my nephew was stopped for a speeding ticket & was found to having overstayed his US Visa by one day, he would have been deported same week.”
Such statements prompt me to think:
“But my friend your nephew was not drunk while he was driving and you are no Barack Obama.
This is Obama’s America my friend, where Justice is blind but the Judges see very well, who is who, and who his uncle is.”
In the U.S., the top Justice in the land – Chief Justice John Roberts – cast the deciding vote on the extremely controversial Obamacare law. Many Americans hold the view that Roberts was either intimidated or blackmailed into ruling in Obama’s favor. Whether those claims have merit is for others to decide but I will say this. If the most powerful Justice in America was intimidated into voting in favor of the President’s signature legislation, a much lower ranking Justice in Egypt was willing to charge his President with murder. Self-preservation was subjugated to Lady Justice, as it should be in any Court of Law.
Chief Justice John Roberts
We can change the present and the future but we can never change history.
History tells us that as Christopher Columbus was lost on the high seas, Egyptians had already found their high court, centuries earlier.
That high court saved them from the chaos that the Obama administration wanted to impose on them.
Ironically, to most Americans, Egypt is merely a third world country that receives financial aid from the U.S. The Obama administration has taken upon itself the responsibility of telling Egyptians how they should run their country. Yet, Mursi and dozens of other Muslim Brotherhood leaders are behind bars. Those are first world accomplishments.
Mursi behind bars.
Senator John McCain (R-AZ) could not have offended more Egyptians during his last visit to our country; he impugned the very Judicial system that played an integral role in ridding Egypt of a dictator and a tyrant-in-waiting. In a meeting, while in Egypt, McCain essentially demanded that Mohammed Mursi be given a fair trial, as if the Senator from Arizona viewed himself as the supreme guardian of justice in the new world.
Egyptian Senator, Mr. Sameh Makram Ebeid went on public television and demanded that U.S. Ambassador to Egypt – Anne Patterson – be branded “persona non grata” in Egypt. In the days before Mursi’s removal, Patterson gave a speech in which she implied the June 30th protests would not be effective. She was wrong and she was disgraced, yet still promoted by the Obama administration (and confirmed by the Senate).
Nonetheless, her exit from Egypt closely followed Mursi’s ouster; Egyptians could not be happier with her departure.
Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs)
NGOs are not-to-distant cousins to lobbyists. The Egyptian public, more so than the Government, has asked for a cessation of American-financed NGOs being permitted to operate in Egypt. The people feel that these organizations have fueled the war on their country’s sovereignty and stability.
If, as Egyptians suspect, the Obama administration wants to invest in NGO-funded programs to put Justices with the legal skills of the Honorable Leonard Shapiro into positions currently held by Justices like Khaled Mahgoub, can you blame Egyptians for rejecting such NGO’s?
Egyptians are simply not willing to trade justice for politics.