Adeel Malik
In the final moments of his life, Mohamed Morsi urged a judge to let him share secrets which he had kept even from his lawyer, according to an account obtained by Middle East Eye.
Morsi said he needed to speak in a closed session to reveal the information – a request the deposed president had repeatedly appealed for in the past but never been granted.
Standing before the court, the man whose presidency ended in a bloody military coup said he would keep the secrets to himself until he died or met Allah. He collapsed soon after.
While Middle East Eye cannot independently verify the account, details have been corroborated by other reports of the court session seen by MEE and sources familiar with Morsi’s case.
As Morsi spoke, the judge cut him off, asking the shackled man if he was going to start preaching, and declared that the next hearing would be on Tuesday.
Morsi’s health had reportedly deteriorated over the course of his nearly six-year incarceration, according to the findings of a panel of British politicians and lawyers who warned last year that could die prematurely as a result of inadequate medical treatment.
Egypt’s first freely elected leader had been imprisoned since his defence minister, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, seized power in a 2013 military coup. Sisi is now president, and has outlawed the Muslim Brotherhood group from which Morsi hailed.
The ex-president was one of 60,000 political prisoners estimated to have been detained since Sisi took power.
Morsi was suffering from conditions linked to his diabetes and high blood pressure and while in jail had experienced diabetic coma as a result.
Earlier in Monday’s court session, according to the account, fellow detainees Safwat al-Hejazi, a senior Brotherhood figure, and Essam al-Haddad, who served as Morsi’s foreign affairs advisor, asked the judge to consider holding court sessions less frequently.
At their age, they said they were tiring from sitting on the floor of the courtroom from 7am until the evening without food or medicine.
Haddad’s son Abdullah told MEE he fears his father and brother Gehad, who is also imprisoned, will share Morsi’s fate.
“There are many others who are on the verge of death and unless the international community speaks out and demands others to be released, many more will die, including my own father and brother,” he said.
