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Egyptian court dissolves Muslim Brotherhood’s political party | ASHARQ AL-AWSAT English Archive 2005 -2017
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In this file April 2011 photo, Mohamed Mursi (R) speaks, alongside other members of the Muslim Brotherhood group’s political wing, the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), during a news conference in Cairo, Egypt. (Reuters/Mohamed Abd El Ghany)


In this April 2011 file photo, Mohamed Mursi (R) speaks, alongside other members of the Muslim Brotherhood group’s political wing, the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), during a news conference in Cairo, Egypt. (Reuters/Mohamed Abd El Ghany)

In this April 2011 file photo, Mohamed Mursi (R) speaks, alongside other members of the Muslim Brotherhood group’s political wing, the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), during a news conference in Cairo, Egypt. (Reuters/Mohamed Abd El Ghany)

Cairo, Asharq Al-Awsat—Egypt’s Supreme Administrative Court dissolved the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) in a legal ruling announced on Saturday.

The ruling will prevent the party from contesting parliamentary elections expected to be held by the end of the year.

The court said the decision was based on the legal ban on parties’ having links to foreign political organizations, and came after a report from the court’s advisory panel noted that several FJP leaders had been accused and convicted of inciting violence.

Although the court did not release details of its ruling, documents related to the case obtained by Asharq Al-Awsat showed that the Supreme State Security Prosecutors had investigated the nature of the relationship between the FJP and the Muslim Brotherhood, as well as the relationship between the Brotherhood’s international branches.

Although 11 cases to dissolve the FJP had been submitted to the court, it ruled only on the application by the government committee which oversees political parties, rejecting the other appeals as irrelevant.

The committee is understood to have cited the case against the Brotherhood’s General Guide Mohammed Badie, his deputy Khairat El-Shater, and former president Mohamed Mursi, all of whom have been charged with “collaborating” with the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas.

Meanwhile, the counsel for the FJP, Mahmoud Aboulenein, said he was “shocked” by the ruling, and claimed that the case documents lacked any reference to interrogations by the public prosecutor of the party’s leaders, which is obligatory according to Article 17 of the parties’ law.