ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Islamic party leaders in Iraq and the Kurdistan Region have paid tribute to the deposed president of Egypt, Mohammed Morsi, who died during a court hearing in Cairo on Monday. Morsi, 67, who was Egypt’s first democratically elected president, was removed from power in 2013 in a military coup led by then-defence minister and army chief Abdel Fattah al-Sisi following mass protests. He was handed a death sentence in 2015, which was later commuted to life in prison. The Muslim Brotherhood leader was standing trial on Monday for alleged ties to the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas when he fainted in the courtroom. He was later taken to hospital where he was pronounced dead. He was buried in east Cairo on Tuesday morning. The coroner is yet to determine the cause of death. However, Morsi was known to have been in poor health following years of solitary confinement and limited access to family, lawyers, and doctors. Iraqi and Kurdish Islamic parties and leaders have expressed their sadness at his death. Salahadin Bahadin, head of the Kurdistan Islamic Union (KIU), took to Twitter to describe Morsi as the “legitimate” president of Egypt. His death “shook the heart of every peaceful and faithful Muslim of the world,” he added, sharing his condolences with Morsi’s “comrades”. Ali Qaradaghi, the Kurdish head of the Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated International Union of Islamic Scholars, hailed the late-president, saying “Morsi did not die”. “Rather, he was slowly killed by the sinner group … He will complain about his oppressors and killers to the powerful Almighty. All this blood won’t be for nothing.” Haval Abu Bakir, the governor of Sulaimani, described Morsi as a “brave” man who chose “his people over himself, chose law over anarchy, chose prison over fighting, chose peace over authority, and chose death over injustice.” The Muslim Brotherhood, a grassroots Islamist movement, has affiliates in several countries, including Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development (AKP) party and Tunisia’s Ennahda. The Brotherhood has militant offshoots, but officially renounced violence in the 1970s. The Iraqi Islamic Party and the KIU are known to have sympathies with the Brotherhood. “We express our sincere condolences to the brotherly Egyptian people generally, and especially to the family of president Mohammed Morsi, on his passing after prolonged suffering and difficult humanitarian conditions,” the Iraqi Islamic Party said in a statement on Monday. “The occurrence of the death in the courtroom was concrete evidence of the correctness of international reports that spoke of the eroding of human rights in Egypt.” Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan conveyed his sympathies in a tweet on Monday. “With deep sadness and regret, I received the news of the passing of my brother Mohammed Morsi, the first democratically elected president in Egypt. I pray for mercy for the martyr Mohammed Morsi, one of the biggest strives for democracy in history,” the Turkish president said. Founded by Egyptian scholar and schoolteacher Hassan al-Banna in 1928 as an Islamic charity and political movement, the Society of the Muslim Brothers grew rapidly, spawning offshoots from Morocco to Turkey, many of which are active today. Washington has long considered blacklisting the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organisation. In a post on Facebook, Morsi’s son Ahmed said security forces did not allow his father to be buried in the family’s cemetery in his hometown in Sharqia province. His body was instead interred at a Cairo cemetery dedicated to prominent Islamists. Iraq has recently tried to court good relations with Sisi’s Egypt. Iraqi Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi made his first official foreign visit to Egypt in March this year, where he discussed trade relations and regional security.
