THE military backed interim government in Egypt, since taking over power last year, has shown scant regard for domestic and international public opinion. It had ridden roughshod over the media, banned the largest political party, the Muslim Brotherhood (MB), and incarcerated its top leadership along with thousands of its members and sympathisers. Since the beginning of this year, the crackdown has extended to secular and liberal parties and individuals. Many of these parties and liberal intellectuals had initially welcomed the military coup against the elected government led by President Mohammed Morsi. It was the “Tamarod” (rebel) group, consisting mainly of young pro-democracy activists, who had spearheaded the massive protests against the MB led government in June last year. The army had used the demonstrations calling for the resignation of the elected government, in which more than a million Egyptians participated, as a pretext to oust the elected government. HARSH SENTENCES, MOCKERY OF JUSTICE The Tamarod had originally demanded only a “peaceful transition” to a democratic path. The group had accused the MB government of monopolising power with the aim of implementing an Islamist agenda in the country. Now one of the cofounders of the Tamarod movement, Moheb Doss, has acknowledged that the group was working in tandem with the military and security establishment to destabilise the Morsi government. Egyptian officials have themselves acknowledged that tactical and logistical support was extended by the army and security services to mobilise the tens of thousands of people demanding the dismissal of the Morsi government in June last year. With the army now once again fully in control, the Tamarod and other liberal parties find themselves in the wilderness yet again. The old Mubarak era vestiges are very much back and Egypt seems heading for one-party authoritarian rule once again after a very brief but heady hiatus. The main target for repression is the MB, as the latest events have shown. There are no signs of a letup as the all-out purge against the MB continues unabated. Scattered attacks on military and police posts by armed groups in the Sinai and other parts of the country have been blamed on the MB. Harsh death penalties that were meted out to a total of 720 Egyptians in two separate judgements by a court in Minya, a provincial capital 150 km south of Cairo, on April 28, are the latest illustration of the ongoing purge. The mass death sentences were announced after hearings lasting only a few minutes. Lawyers for the accused were not given an opportunity to speak and the majority of those sentenced to hang were not even there in the court room. In the first week of May, a court in Cairo gave life sentences to more than 100 MB supporters. The UN Secretary General, Ban ki Moon, has issued a statement criticising the verdict. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, described the action of the judge as “outrageous.” The judgments have been described by human rights groups as the largest possible collective death sentence in recent world history. Observers noted that the Egyptian Court handed down its decision just days after the US government approved the supply of 10 Apache attack helicopters along with 650 million dollars in military aid to Egypt. The Obama administration had suspended military aid after the democratically elected government was overthrown last year. The US has been a consistent backer of military rule in Egypt. Ever since President Anwar Sadat capitulated and signed a peace deal with Israel in 1979, Washington has been providing Cairo 1.55 billion dollars annually in military aid. US REMAINS UNPERTURBED Most of those condemned to death are either members or supporters of the banned Muslim Brotherhood. The Brotherhood was running the government in Cairo till the middle of the last year. The military backed ouster of President Mohammed Morsi and bloodshed that followed had led to imposition of draconian laws and mass arrests of opposition leaders and activists. The 1200 defendants sentenced so far were arrested on charges of using violence during the protests that followed the ouster of the government. More than 2000 people were killed in the protests, an overwhelming majority being supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood. Only one policeman was killed in the violence that followed after the ouster of Morsi. Among those sentenced to death in the latest trial is the Brotherhood's supreme leader, Mohamed Badie. A defiant Badie said that the ruling by the court “is the last nail in the coffin of the ruling powers that led the coup” against an elected government. The Brotherhood has, however, said that it remains committed to peaceful resistance to the army backed government. Said Yusuf, the judge who passed the death sentences against 683 Brotherhood supporters, also confirmed the death sentences of 37 of the 529 Brotherhood supporters the overzealous judge had previously sentenced in an earlier ruling in March this year. The other defendants in the first case were all given 25 years in prison. Many of those sentences have been passed in absentia. Egyptian law allows those convicted in absentia another trial. The “Grand Mufti,” the government appointed spiritual head of the Egyptian Muslims, also has the power to issue pardons. Many observers of the Egyptian scene are of the opinion that the harsh nature of the punishment is meant to be more of a warning to the opponents of the interim government. The Egyptian government is unlikely to go ahead with most of the executions. The Egyptian foreign minister, Nabil Fahmy, who was on a visit to Washington, said that the alarm about the judgement was unwarranted, suggesting that they would be overturned on appeal. Even the late Gamal Abdel Nasser had commuted the death sentence on the Supreme Guide, Hasan el-Houdaibi, in 1954 and released him. The US secretary of state, John Kerry did not seem too perturbed by the events in Egypt despite a statement by the US State Department describing the court ruling as “unconscionable.” While welcoming his Egyptian counterpart, Kerry stressed that the two countries were “important strategic partners,” while praising the Egyptian government for taking “positive steps” towards democracy. Kerry had to reluctantly concede that there were “some disturbing decisions within the court system.” American Congressmen, like Senator Patrick Leahy, have taken a less lenient view of the goings-on in Egypt. Leahy has threatened to block further US military aid to Egypt. He described the regime in Cairo “as a dictatorship run amok.” DISGUST WITH ARMY, JUDGES, BROTHERHOOD With presidential elections were scheduled for May 26-27 and the defence minister General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi was all set to be voted in as the new civilian president, the government did not want any serious roadblocks on its path. The former military strongman was seeking a mandate to continue “the fight against terror.” His only rival was Hamdeen Sabahi who had stood third in the 2012 presidential elections that Morsi had won. He espouses a left wing Nasserist ideology and has been openly critical of al-Sisi. Sabahi has been an anti-establishment figure since the early eighties and has been incarcerated during the Mubarak era for his political activism. He said that there was no difference between the Mubarak era policies and those being implemented by the interim government. He faced an uphill task with all the important media outlets fully under the control of the security establishment. In a separate but related event, another Egyptian court banned the “April 6 Movement” on the same day the mass death sentencing was announced. This secular grouping had initially spearheaded the protests that had eventually led to the overthrow of the authoritarian regime of Hosni Mubarak. The court had acted on a complaint from an individual who had alleged that the group had “tarnished the image of the Egyptian state” and conspired against the country's national interests. The two leaders of April 6 Movement, Ahmed Maher and Mohammed Adel, have been arrested for staging a demonstration without getting police permission. A prominent intellectual and political satirist, Belal Fadl, has been blacklisted for lampooning al-Sisi. Fadl has been equally trenchant in his criticism of the Brotherhood and the Islamists. After the military takeover in July, he had written that he detested both the Brothers and those who ousted them from power equally. “I detest you exactly as I detest those who kill you in cold blood. I detest you all because you are exactly the same as each other,” Fadl had written immediately after the coup and its bloody aftermath. Prominent media personalities, including foreigners working for the international media, have been imprisoned for violating the new media laws. One of the major factors that made the ousted Morsi government act in haste on matters related to constitutional law was the entrenched nature of the Egyptian judiciary. The judiciary was never reconciled to the demise of the Mubarak regime and the courts had stymied many of the political reforms that MB government wanted to implement. The Morsi government, after the adoption of the constitution that was approved in a referendum in early 2012, was no doubt keen to overhaul the judicial system. They wanted to replicate what Prime Minister Erdogan and his A K Party had done in Turkey in the last decade. Erdogan, with the help of his now estranged political partner, Fetullah Gulen, had painstakingly changed the “secular fundamentalist” character of the judiciary as well as the security services. The army in Turkey is no longer a threat to the democratic institutions of the country. But before the MB leadership could implement their blueprint, the Egyptian security struck and removed Morsi from power. Erdogan, along with the Qatari government, were the biggest political and financial backers of the ousted regime.