Dubai:

Mohamed Badi, the supreme leader of Egypt’s outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, was once considered Egypt’s Khamenei and one of the masterminds behind the group’s rise to power after the overthrow of former President Hosni Mubarak. one.

Badi was elected in 2010 as the eighth “general guide” of the organization, once the largest and most influential Islamist movement in the Middle East, just a year before the Arab Spring uprisings.

He began comparing Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei after Khamenei through the political faction he first established during his reign The Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) led the Brotherhood to a parliamentary majority and the rise of former Egyptian president Mohamed Mursi. The first democratically elected head of state in Egypt’s modern history.

Badi, 81, was born in Cairo’s industrial El-Mahalla El-Kubra, a politically active workers’ city that later saw protests against Morsi. He graduated from Cairo University’s School of Veterinary Medicine, where he first joined the fraternity and received his PhD. He later worked as a professor at the University of Benisuef.

He was imprisoned several times during his life, the first of which was the execution in 1965 of Brotherhood luminary Sayyid Qutb, after being sentenced to 15 years in prison in a military case for his writings on the Islamic Revolution. Militant activity in Egypt and elsewhere has provided ideological fuel for decades.

Qutb, considered a major influence on Badi, was sentenced for trying to overthrow the country of former socialist president Gamal Abdel Nasser. Buddy served only nine years of the fifteen.

Badi was jailed for two other military cases during Mubarak’s rule and later for his role in the violence that erupted after the army led by then-general General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi overthrew Morsi. He was convicted for his role and sentenced to life in prison in at least three cases. after massive demonstrations against him.

He faces the death penalty in a separate case amid what rights groups say is an unprecedented crackdown by the government of President Sisi, who campaigned for the presidency on a promise to stamp out the Muslim Brotherhood. Badi’s only son, Ammar, was killed during a military crackdown on protests in 2013. Badi told the court responsible for the “Raba sit-in” case that “there is no valid legal evidence to prove any accusation against me.” In 2016, he was “disbanded”.

The Brotherhood and its supporters have camped out in the streets around Cairo’s Rabaa al-Adawiya Square for weeks, and rights groups say more than 800 people were killed when security forces stormed into the square to clear it.

Led by Islamist hardline Badi, the Muslim Brotherhood sees Egypt as a bastion of Islamization in the Middle East. It hopes to transform Egypt, the region’s largest state and most powerful military, into a model Islamic society. The problem is that Egyptian Muslims feel patronized by the Brotherhood’s attempts to tell them how best to be a Muslim, which leads to massive protests.

Badi was widely criticized when he was seen as Egypt’s de facto ruler, with many denouncing his influence as eclipsing Morsi’s. The Sunni governance system is very similar to that of Iran’s Shia, in which Islamic leaders become the governing reference for the democratically elected president, but this system has been widely opposed in Egypt. The Brotherhood has publicly dismissed such criticism, and Badi has denied the influence.

Badi said in an interview with Asharq Al-Awsat in 2012: “President Morsi is the real president of Egypt. I do not accept interfering in his work in any way, or even serving as a communication channel between anyone and the president.” Ersi) is now the president of all Egyptians and he has resigned from all leadership positions within the Muslim Brotherhood and the (Freedom and Justice) Party, so we should not try to create obstacles for the march because we cannot build anything by stimulating . Such questions,” Buddy added.

The military said a popular uprising against the rule of the Muslim Brotherhood party in 2013 forced it to intervene. Badi and Morsi collapsed in a Cairo court in 2019 during their trial on espionage charges and were jailed along with many prominent Brotherhood figures and hundreds of their supporters. In 2014, Osama Mursi, a lawyer for Mohamed Morsi’s son who attended one of Morsi’s trials in Cairo, quoted Badi as saying: “Even if they execute me a thousand times, I will not I won’t give up on the right path.”

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)