Mohamed Morsi
Mohamed Morsi was president of Egypt for a year and three days, from 30 June 2012 to 3 July 2013, the first civilian, the first freely elected, and the first from the Muslim Brotherhood, the engineering professor with the doctorate from the University of Southern California who had been the Brotherhood's spare candidate, put up when its first choice was disqualified, and who beat Mubarak's last prime minister in the run-off by three points. His year was the constitutional declaration of 22 November 2012 in which he put his decisions beyond the reach of any court until a constitution was passed, which brought the crowds back to Tahrir and the Brotherhood's crowds to face them. There was the constitution rushed through an assembly the liberals and Christians had walked out of and passed by referendum in December with a third of the electorate voting, the economy with its reserves gone and its fuel queues. There were the protests of 30 June 2013, on his anniversary, that the army said were the largest in history. It used them, three days later, when General Sisi, whom he had appointed, announced on television that he was no longer president. He was born in Sharqia in the Delta in 1951, a farmer's son, studied engineering at Cairo, took the doctorate in materials science in 1982, taught at Northridge and then at Zagazig, joined the Brotherhood in 1977. He sat in parliament as an independent in 2000-05, and was jailed for seven months in 2006 and again on 28 January 2011, escaping from Wadi Natrun prison two days later when the guards fled. He was later tried for that. He was held after the coup at an unknown place for four months. He was then tried in a soundproof glass cage on charges of inciting the killing of protesters, of espionage for Qatar and Hamas, and of the prison break, sentenced to death in 2015 in the last of these and to twenty years and to life in the others, the death sentence was quashed on appeal. The Rabaa square massacre of August 2013, in which the army and police killed at least eight hundred of his supporters in a morning, was the price of his year. He collapsed in the courtroom cage on 17 June 2019 during a session. He was pronounced dead in hospital, and was buried before dawn the next day in a Cairo cemetery with his family and no one else allowed.
- Lived: 1951 CE – 2019 CE
- Nationality: Egyptian
- Roles: president, engineer, politician
