Egypt jails 40 Morsi backers for church fires

An Egyptian court sentenced 40 backers of ousted Islamist president Mohamed Morsi to up to 15 years in jail Thursday for violence including torching churches, a judicial source said.

Followers of Morsi have been the target of a relentless crackdown by the authorities since he was deposed in July 2013 by ex-army chief and now President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.

The criminal court in Assiut in southern Egypt sentenced two defendants to 15 years each, while the others were given jail terms ranging from one year to 10, the source said.

They were accused of taking part in acts of violence in Assiut last year during which five churches, several police stations and a number of shops were set on fire. There were no reported casualties.

Violent clashes erupted across Egypt on August 14, 2013, as news spread across the country of a violent dispersal by the police and army of two protest camps in Cairo set up by Morsi supporters.

Dozens of churches and church properties were attacked across Egypt after the bloodshed, in response to perceived Coptic Christian support for Morsi's ouster.

The crackdown since then has left at least 1,400 people dead and more than 15,000 imprisoned.

The ex-president and many top leaders of his now-banned Muslim Brotherhood are themselves in jail and on trial in cases in which they face the death penalty if convicted.

Dozens of Morsi supporters have been sentenced to death after mass trials which the United Nations says are "unprecedented" in recent history.

HOORAY Egypt!

From FReeper, Interesting Times (May 29, 2002)…

The President

After meeting with two black ministers at the request of NCC general secretary Joan Campbell, President Clinton focused on the church burnings in his June 8 radio address. He proposed a new federal task force to investigate the arsons, and recalled “vivid and painful memories of black churches being burned in my own state when I was a child.” The president also stated that “racial hostility is the driving force” behind the fires, and pledged that the federal government would respond with its full power.

A burst of presidential activity followed. On June 14, Clinton invited Southern governors to a White House summit on the church fires. The next day, the BATF and FBI assigned 200 federal agents to the investigation. On June 17, the president assigned James Witt, head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), to head a multi-agency effort aimed at prevention. On July 11, Clinton told delegates to the NAACP’s annual convention that America must stop “the fires of hatred and bigotry.” On July 13, Clinton signed into law the ‘Church Fire Prevention Act of 1996’, which added church arsons to the more than 3,000 types of federal crime already on the books. On August 7, the president signed a spending bill that included $12 million to combat fires at churches with black congregations. Clinton toured the ruins of burned-out black churches on two occasions, including his 50th birthday on Aug 19. On August 29, while accepting his party’s nomination to a second term as president, Clinton again referred to the fires, and also condemned the painting of swastikas on the doors of Special Forces troops at Fort Bragg in North Carolina as racially motivated.

Publicity Firestorm

Media coverage of the church fires exploded after the President’s radio speech. By June 8, over 2,200 newspaper articles on the topic had been printed. Magazine and television reports proclaimed that a new campaign of terror was occurring in the South, comparable to the wave of church burnings and bombings by segregationists during the 1950’s and early 1960’s. The Los Angeles Sentinel printed an article on June 13 typical of the tone of the coverage entitled “Madmen Setting Fires Of Hatred In South.” USA Today ran huge articles on three consecutive days. In pulpits across the country, ministers raised their voices against racial terrorism and took up collections to rebuild the churches.

The vast majority of news accounts reported as a fact that burnings of black churches had dramatically increased. Many also raised the issue of whether conservative politics had helped to create a ‘climate of intolerance’ conducive to racial terrorism. The Rev. C.T. Vivian, chairman of the CDR, helpfully suggested that “There’s only a slippery slope between conservative religious persons and those that are really doing the burning.”

Other Voices

Not everyone accepted the claims made by the CDR, NCC, and President Clinton at face value. The day after President Clinton’s radio address, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette and others reported that no church burning had occurred in Arkansas during Mr. Clinton’s childhood, the president’s “vivid and painful” memories notwithstanding.

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