CAIRO: International envoys visited a high-ranking member of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood in jail on Monday, the state news agency reported, to press a bid to defuse the crisis ignited by President Mohamed Mursi’s downfall.
The envoys met deputy Brotherhood leader Khairat El-Shater just after midnight, having received permission from the prosecutor general to visit him at Tora prison, south of Cairo, the state news agency MENA reported.
The report citing “an informed source” contradicted an earlier government denial of a visit by officials from the United States, European Union, United Arab Emirates and Qatar.
MENA gave no further details. Earlier, the Doha-based Al Jazeera news channel reported the meeting had taken place. The reports could not be independently confirmed.
Shater is deputy leader of the group that propelled Mursi to office last year in Egypt’s first democratic presidential election. Seen as the Brotherhood’s political strategist, he was arrested after Mursi’s downfall on charges of inciting violence. The international mediation effort is helping to contain the bloody conflict between Mursi’s Islamist backers and the interim government installed by the military that overthrew him on July 3, following mass protests against his rule.
The army-backed government said yesterday it would give mediation a chance but warned that time was limited.
Thousands of Mursi supporters remain camped out in two Cairo sit-ins, which the government has declared a threat to national security and pledged to disperse.
Al Masry Al Youm, a privately owned newspaper, said Shater was visited by a delegation including US Deputy Secretary of State William Burns and European Union envoy Bernadino Leon. Shater told the envoys he would only hold talks with them in the presence of Mursi because he was “the legitimate president”, the newspaper reported on its website, citing a senior security source. The diplomats were accompanied by members of the armed forces during the visit, which the report said was focused on ways to end the sit-ins. (PTI)