Petr David Josek/Associated Press
Demonstrators camping out in Cairo's Tahrir Square on Monday.
CAIRO — A day after President Mohamed Morsi formally directed the military to help keep public order and authorized soldiers to arrest civilians, a spokesman on Monday sought to draw distinctions between the order and the forms of martial law that the Egyptian Army had previously imposed.
The spokesman, Khaled Al-Qazzaz, said the president had called upon the military for the limited purpose of protecting polling stations during Saturday’s constitutional referendum. He also said the president had instructed the army to refer any civilians arrested by soldiers to a civilian court for trial, instead of military tribunals, reversing the blanket authorizations that the Egyptian military has long demanded when it takes on a policing role in the streets.
“This is very different from what happened under the SCAF,” said Mr. Qazzaz, referring to the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, which ruled Egypt after President Hosni Mubarak was ousted and until Mr. Morsi took over. “What the president did with the cabinet is, anyone arrested will be referred to a normal judicial process and it will go to a normal civilian court. There will be no military trials.”
Ending military trials was a rallying cry of the opposition when the council was in charge, but it was not immediately clear on Monday how the instructions Mr. Qazzaz described might fit within the written order or the usual rules of the Egyptian military.
Heba Morayef, a researcher with Human Rights Watch, noted that the text of the order allowed the military to continue taking civilians to military courts. “Had he wanted to,” Ms. Morayef said, “President Morsi could have stipulated that the military’s jurisdiction would have been limited in this case and that every civilian will be referred to a civilian court, but he chose not to.” She also noted that the draft constitution specifically allows for the military to continue bringing civilians to military courts for trial if they disobey a military authority. “As long as the military is deployed, the military has jurisdiction under the military code of justice,” she said.
The debate over the military’s role in the referendum added to the intensifying political crisis over Egypt’s draft constitution, which the president and his Islamist allies are trying to pass quickly. After announcing its “complete rejection of the referendum” on Sunday, a coalition of the president’s opponents indicated on Monday that it was still debating whether to call for a boycott of the charter or to campaign for a vote against it.
There are also splits among Egypt’s judges, who are supposed to supervise the referendum. On Monday, a group representing administrative court judges said that under certain conditions they would agree to supervise the vote, while other judges’ clubs have said their members would boycott the referendum.
Major demonstrations are expected at the presidential palace again on Tuesday and Friday — ensuring that questions about Egypt’s national unity and stability will continue to overshadow debate about the specific contents of the charter. Although international experts who have studied the draft say it is hardly more religious than Egypt’s existing Constitution, opponents say it fails to adequately protect individual rights from being constricted by a future Islamist majority in Parliament.
Over the past two weeks, hundreds of thousands of people have poured into the streets to oppose the charter, crowds have attacked 28 Muslim Brotherhood offices and the group’s headquarters, and at least seven people have died in clashes between Islamist and secular political factions.
Morsi Spokesman Tries to Clarify Military Order
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Morsi Spokesman Tries to Clarify Military Order
