Subtitles heavly edited and fixed by KarMa of the MVG :P
>> For the last two years, Frontline has watched what
looked like a revolution.
(protestors shouting)
From a dictatorship to
democratic elections.
>> Dr. Mohamed Morsi.
>> Unfortunately, he was no Mandela.
>> From the overthrow of a new
president...
>> They were chanting against
Morsi, they were chanting
against the Muslim Brotherhood,
and some people were chanting
for the military.
>> To the military taking
control.
What happened to Egypt's revolution?
>> Was the military responding
to the will of the people or
making this all happen?
>> And what will come next? >> With Sisi, we have something
much more ominous, much more
dangerous.
>> Global Post's Charles Sennt
reports for Frontline.
>> We got to really go this way.
Come on.
>> On Egypt in crisis.
>> Frontline is made possible by contributions to your PBS
station from:
And by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
Major support for Frontline is
provided by the John D. and
Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.
Committed to building a more
just, verdant, and peaceful world.
More information is available
at macfound.org.
Additional funding is provided
by the Park Foundation.
Dedicated to heightening public
awareness of critical issues.
The Wyncote Foundation.
And by the Frontline Journalism
Fund with grants from
Millicent Bell through the
Millicent and Eugene Bell
And Scott Nathan and Laura DeBonis.
>> SENNOTT: Two and a half years ago, I came to Egypt and
witnessed what we thought
was a revolution.
I watched as young activists
marched to Tahrir or Liberation
Square.
(protestors chanting)
>> SENNOTT: I watched as they were joined by Egyptians of all
ages and all classes, men and women.
>> SENNOTT: I was there day and night for two weeks.
One evening, a young songwriter
named Ramy Essam performed
an anthem of what the people
were calling the
January 25 revolution.
>> SENNOTT: It was a time of
incredible hope and high expectations.
(praying)
>> SENNOTT: But I had come
on a specific mission.
I had come to understand the
role of the long-outlawed
Islamist group the Muslim Brotherhood.
Hi, I'm Charles.
Nice to meet you.
On Tahrir Square, I found
Mohammad Abbas, a leader of the
Muslim Brotherhood's youth wing.
Abbas had been working alongside
secular activists to help
organize the revolt.
He was eager to show us what he
and his fellow Brothers had
contributed.
>> SENNOTT: Abbas pointed out how the Brothers were in charge
of the security checkpoints,
serving hot tea, distributing
blankets, printing posters
and running an emergency health
clinic.
They were holding the
revolution's infrastructure together.
>> SENNOTT: At the same time, they wanted to keep a low profile.
The Brotherhood was worried that
Mubarak would succeed in
portraying the revolution as a
Muslim Brotherhood conspiracy.
We saw this sensitivity play out
when this man approached our
camera, holding up his pocket Koran.
I watched as Mohammad Abbas took
him aside and told him to put it away.
>> SENNOTT: Abbas then explained what was going on.
>> SENNOTT: The more I got to know Abbas, the more I realized
how different he was than older, more conservative Brothers
I had encountered in the past.
Still, there were many on the square who feared the Muslim
Brotherhood was hijacking
the revolution.
I spoke to a young law student
who had been here from the beginning.
So you were here on the 25th,
and you saw a change here.
Tell me about that.
>> I'm afraid.
>> SENNOTT: What are you afraid of?
>> The Brothers, the Islamic Brothers.
>> SENNOTT: You're afraid
of the Muslim Brotherhood?
>> Yeah.
>> SENNOTT: Why?
>> SENNOTT: At that time, it wasn't at all clear what
direction the country would take
or even if Mubarak would fall.
But you couldn't help but notice
that the most powerful player
in Egypt, the military,
was watching and waiting,
contemplating their next move.
For revolutionaries, the
military was a kind of unholy ally.
>> The military are not our friends.
But I think what the military
began to realize when millions
of people protested against
Mubarak's regime and demanded
his ouster was that this power,
this power among the people,
was a real force to reckon with.
>> SENNOTT: On the 17th day of the protests, everyone was
listening to a broadcast of
Mubarak refusing to go.
>> SENNOTT: When suddenly, Mohammad Abbas stepped to center stage.
>> SENNOTT: He directly addressed the military
>> SENNOTT: ...urging them to finish the job.
>> SENNOTT: Less than 24 hours later, Mubarak was gone.
>> SENNOTT: Around the world, the revolution was hailed
as a victory for the people:
a new day in the Arab Spring.
But they didn't see
what happened next.
A few hundred revolutionaries
had remained camped on the
square, demanding that Mubarak's
regime be prosecuted for human
rights abuses and corruption.
They trusted the military would continue to protect them.
But in less than a month,
the Supreme Council of the Armed
Forces, or SCAF, the generals
now running Egypt, ordered their
troops to move in.
(shouting)
>> On March 9, you know, very infamously, the SCAF cleared
Tahrir Square and took female
and male revolutionaries to
military prison, where many of
them were tortured.
>> SENNOTT: Largely out of sight
from Western media,
the revolution looked like
it was over before it began.
>> I mean, this was a very clear
and very early signal that
the junta was not on our side,
that they were not supporting
or protecting our revolution.
>> It was discovered what we had
all as revolutionaries suspected
was happening, that the army and
the military police had been
rounding up activists--
interestingly enough,
in the Egyptian museum--
and torturing them.
That they had been establishing
checkpoints on Egyptian highways
and rounding up, again,
activists and torturing them.
>> SENNOTT: One of those rounded
up was the young singer, Ramy Essam.
>> (translated): They took me
into the museum with 200 other people.
I was tortured for four straight
hours.
They used different methods,
like hitting me with wooden
sticks or iron bars.
There is no part of my body
that they did not electrocute.
The people who were torturing me
were not just ordinary soldiers.
They were senior officers as well.
They tried to humiliate us and
taunt us with names, trying to
destroy our dignity.
They would say, "Are you happy
with your revolution now?"
>> SENNOTT: Around 150 men and women arrested on March 9
were tried and convicted
in military courts and sent
to military prisons.
Meanwhile, the Brotherhood had kept a low profile.
>> The Brotherhood steered away
from protests against the military.
The few times when they
participated in mass protests,
they were always very keen and
eager on avoiding criticism of
the military and silencing
voices that say things like,
"Down with military rule"
and that kind of stuff.
>> The Muslim Brothers
were the cleverest,
and they were the first ones
to go to the army and say,
"Here, we are at your service.
We can work with you."
>> I think we need to understand
that the Brotherhood doesn't
have any revolutionary ideology.
>> SENNOTT: I had seen this during the January 25 revolution.
The old guard of the Brotherhood
had hung back.
I found them far from Tahrir Square
At this press conference
>> SENNOTT: While they said they supported the protests, Mohamed
Morsi, then a relatively obscure figure, explained they were
working with the military.
>> Since the 25th of January
revolution, they decided from
the beginning to side with these
strong players, which was mainly
the military.
>> SENNOTT: Throughout 2011,
the Brotherhood kept talking
to the military, kept off the
streets and outmaneuvered its
political rivals.
Revolutionaries, liberals and
minorities were nervous about
the Brotherhood's ambitions.
Egypt's Coptic Christians were especially fearful.
Members of Egypt's largest
minority religious group, around
10% of the population, the Copts
have survived here since the
beginning of Christianity.
But in recent years, Coptic Christians have seen a steady
rise in attacks by ultra-
conservative militant Islamists.
Christians expected the
government to protect them.
>> There've been many attacks
against churches, and SCAF
was doing nothing, just as
the Mubarak regime did nothing,
to protect the Christian population.
>> And so this massive protest
began outside the TV and radio
building because many people
felt that the TV, state-run TV,
was inciting people against
minorities and against
revolutionaries.
>> SENNOTT: The demonstration
at the Maspero press center
was dispersed by the military with brute force.
(people screaming)
>> I think Maspero in October 2011 was a huge turning point.
I think it was a traumatic event
for the Christian minorities,
for Christians in Egypt.
This was the first time that
the military had used excessive
lethal force in that way.
27 protesters were killed.
>> SENNOTT: Mina Daniel, now a celebrated martyr, was among the
people protesting that night.
Mina's sister Mary remembers.
>> (translated): We came under
gunfire and were pursued
by armored vehicles,
crashing into parked cars.
Tear gas bombs were flying.
It was a horrible scene.
I could not find Mina.
I kept calling him,
but his mobile was turned off.
Then someone told me
that he been taken
to the Coptic Hospital.
There, I found Mina in the morgue.
He looked like he was sleeping,
with a smile on his face.
I saw a lot of dead bodies
around Maspero.
I saw one person shot
in the neck, and the bullet hole
was still visible.
I saw a lot of blood.
I will never forget that day.
>> SENNOTT: After Maspero, no one was chanting, "The army
and the people, hand in hand."
>> SENNOTT: Six weeks later, voting began for a new
Egyptian parliament.
I was back in Egypt and found Mohammed Abbas nine months after
we'd first met in early 2011.
Abbas was now running
for a parliamentary seat,
but he was at a disadvantage.
He had criticized the
Brotherhood's leadership for its
failure to speak out against
military repression and he had
been expelled from the party.
But he remained optimistic
about the process.
>> SENNOTT: Whether Abbas would win was unclear,
but other Muslim Brothers
looked to win big.
For the Brotherhood,
it's been a long fight.
The organization was started over 80 years ago, largely
as a religious movement.
Its motto:
"Islam is the solution."
>> The message was a moral message.
"The time has come
to return to Islam."
>> SENNOTT: But for some
Brothers, the ultimate goal was
to build an Islamic state.
In the 1940s, they began
a campaign of violence against
occupying British troops.
Then a Muslim Brother
attempted to assassinate
Egypt's secular president.
Gamal Abdel Nasser cracked down.
>> The organization itself
was declared illegal.
Its members were rounded up,
its assets were confiscated,
and thousands and thousands
of people were sent to prison
for years on end.
>> SENNOTT: In the 1970s,
President Anwar Sadat also kept
up pressure on the Brotherhood.
But the movement split
over the use of violence.
(gunshots)
Some members left to join groups
like Ayman al-Zawahiri's Islamic
Jihad, responsible for Sadat's
1981 assassination.
>> We try our best to establish
this Islamic state and Islamic
society!
>> SENNOTT: Al-Zawahiri would
later join forces with Al-Qaeda,
but the mainstream leadership
of the Brotherhood rejected
violence and committed itself
to the democratic process.
In 2005, their candidates
had won 20% of Egypt's
parliamentary seats.
President Mubarak, perceiving
a threat, again cracked down.
He closed hundreds
of their schools and clinics
and arrested over 1,200 members.
But persecution seemed to stiffen their resolve.
In 2012, with Mubarak gone,
they aimed for the presidency.
>> (all): Doctor Mohamed Morsi. >> (laughing)
>> No, I never heard
Morsi's name before.
You know, the Muslim Brothers
after the revolution and when
presidential elections were
approaching, they said they will
not field any presidential candidate.
>> SENNOTT: I'd heard that before.
In fact, I'd heard it
from Morsi himself back
at that 2011 press conference.
You're not going to have
a presidential candidate?
Why not?
>> Well, we are saying that
it's most important for us
to prepare the society.
Freedom, democracy and justice
are required now more than just
thinking about who will control who.
>> SENNOTT: Soon after,
the Brotherhood reversed its position.
Morsi, a U.S.-educated engineer,
was originally a dark horse
>> Nobody really saw him
as the man who would take
the forefront.
I mean, his nickname in the
presidential race was "the spare
tire" because he was the
replacement candidate.
>> SENNOTT: But as Egyptians headed for the polls, a run-off
had come down to just two men:
a Mubarak-era general
named Ahmed Shafik or Morsi.
>> I don't believe the majority
of people voted for Mohamed
Morsi because they wanted him as
president.
I believe it was a false choice.
The majority of people who voted
for him voted for him because
they didn't want the other
candidate, who was the military
junta candidate, Ahmed Shafik.
>> Many people were terrified of Shafik and not happy with
the prospect of the former
regime returning to power.
>> SENNOTT: The vote was extremely close.
It took one week for the results
to be announced.
(cheering) >> A group that counts its core membership at less than five
percent of the Egyptian
population had leveraged its way
to power.
>> SENNOTT: The long outlawed, long persecuted Muslim Brotherhood had won.
>> It felt incredible.
Here we are, the first
democratically elected president
in the entire history of Egypt.
The first civilian to ever head
Egypt in the modern era.
And it was like stepping into
the warm sunshine after a long,
long, cold winter.
>> SENNOTT: On Tahrir Square, Morsi stood before his
supporters, and in a signal that
he was not afraid, he showed the
crowd he was not wearing any
body armor.
(crowd cheering)
>> He got elected by the people. 52% of the people,
of the Egyptian people.
I don't care why they were
voting against his opponent.
I mean, they elected him.
Why don't people just accept it?
>> SENNOTT: Morsi promised to be
a president to all Egyptians,
and President Obama hailed his
election as a milestone in
Egypt's transition to democracy.
He had won, but he was already
facing powerful opponents.
Just a few days earlier, Egypt's
supreme court, packed with
Mubarak-era judges, had declared
January's parliamentary
elections invalid and ordered
the parliament shut down.
Islamist parties,
led by the Muslim Brotherhood,
had won nearly 70% of the seats.
>> They destroyed parliament
two days before the presidential
election, and they knew that if
a president comes with a
parliament that's been
electorally voted in, these two
institutions can literally start
dismantling the old dictatorship
bit by bit.
And they had to dysfunction
one element of that.
>> The dilemma is that the
Muslim Brotherhood come to power
through elections.
They're supposedly
at the helm of the state.
So they are in power, but
they're actually not in power.
>> SENNOTT: Egyptians often talk of something they call the deep
state: an expression that refers
to elements of the Mubarak
regime embedded deep inside
Egypt's government.
The deep state includes the
supreme court, all state-run
media, the police,
and at the very top, the army.
>> The term "deep state" I think
originally comes from Turkey:
the sense that the military is
not necessarily ruling directly,
but what you have is kind of
underneath the surface of
politics, this underlying set of
structures that's running things.
>> It is much deeper
than what everybody thought.
It is really very deep because
it's a result of 60 years of
bad governments and corruption,
so you need some time
and you need drastic measures
in order to be able
to get rid of that.
>> SENNOTT: Revolutionaries and liberals who voted for Morsi
hoped the new president and a
new constitution would restrain
Egypt's deep state.
>> One of the big demands of the
Egyptian Revolution was to say,
"We don't want any more torture.
We don't any more abuse by the
security services.
We don't want any more civilians
being tried in military courts,"
and so forth and so on.
>> We wanted to have something
in the constitution against torture.
We wanted to have something
in the constitution
against police brutality.
in the constitution that would
limit the power of the military.
But rather than curb
the power of the military,
the constitution gave the
military everything they wanted.
>> Basically what the
constitution guaranteed for the
military was safe passage
so that none of them were held
accountable for their violations
of our rights during the junta
rule, the SCAF rule,
left the military budget
untouched, left any kind of
civilian oversight of that
budget, and allowed the military
to continue to put civilians
before military tribunals,
which were all things that we,
the revolution, wanted to fix.
>> The fatal mistake is that the
Muslim Brotherhood could have
turned to us, the revolution,
and could have turned to Tahrir
and to tell them, "We need you
to write a constitution that
would limit the power of the
We need you to curb and cleanse
the very corrupt judiciary."
We would have come to his rescue.
And instead, he tried to flirt
with the police and the military
against us.
>> SENNOTT: For any leader,
curbing the military
would have been hard.
In Egypt, the military
is more than an army:
it's big business, controlling
as much as 40% of the economy.
They make cars, chemicals,
bottled water, and even bread.
The full extent of their empire is unknown.
>> The military is one of the
top landowners in the country,
and you can't even really get
a proper list of military-
associated industries.
And the military wants
to preserve its perks,
its privileges, its significant
private sector economic empire,
and they want to escape
from civilian oversight.
>> SENNOTT: Egypt's military
also receives $1.3 billion
in aid from the United States
and enjoys close ties
with the Pentagon.
Morsi left the military
untouched, but in exchange,
he wanted the generals
to stay out of politics.
To cement the deal, Morsi
picked a new army chief,
General Abdel Fattah El-Sisi.
>> And it was a relationship
of trust, because apparently
according to reports, El-Sisi
went out of his way to tell
Morsi that he is a pious Muslim,
he's a practicing Muslim,
and that in fact, even his
political ideas about elections
and about sovereignty are very
much in alignment with that of
the Muslim Brotherhood.
>> SENNOTT: Revolutionaries have
long felt betrayed by the army
and the Brotherhood.
Back in Cairo in 2011,
I got caught up in protests.
Basically, what happened was just an eruption of people
saying, "That's it."
There hasn't been justice
for those who were killed.
And people seem really ready
to say they're not going to stop
until there's justice.
(protestors yelling)
>> SENNOTT: After Morsi's election, protests like this continued.
>> Morsi took over the Mubarak
tool kit of state-controlled
media, the repressive penal
code, and he started using that,
and he started using that
against his opponents.
He would always argue that it
was necessary to do that because
there were enemies everywhere
and the deep state was against him,
but when you look even at the
record of what he was able to do
or the areas where he had
decision-making power, it was
often a decision towards a more
authoritarian form of rule.
>> Unfortunately, he was no Mandela.
He did not seem to get to grips
with the mien of the Egyptian,
with the soul of Egypt.
We felt that he was divisive.
>> SENNOTT: It was Morsi's
greatest weakness.
Egypt has always portrayed
itself as a diverse, secular
state where government kept
religion in balance.
But Morsi had a different
agenda, and his pursuit of
exclusionist Islamist politics
would ultimately lead to his downfall.
The showdown would come over the
role of Islamic or Sharia law
in a new Egyptian constitution.
>> Women, Christians, intellectuals, all these were
sidelined in the new constitution.
They would say, "You can have
liberty of expression, freedom,
etcetera, if it is in conformity
with Sharia."
>> There was a lot of doors
that were opened to potentially
scary places.
The sections in the constitution
that were about women's rights
stressed equality, but then they
felt the need to insert
language, you know, that women
are equal and have equal rights
and equal work, you know,
equal rights to work
as long as it doesn't contradict
their duties at home.
You know?
Like little, obnoxious things
like that.
>> SENNOTT: In the fall of 2012,
Islamists began to fear that the
judiciary might shut down the
constituent assembly: the body
drafting the new constitution.
Morsi struck a preemptive blow.
>> On the 21st of November,
Morsi issued a constitutional
decree that gave him a lot of
powers and put him above the
constitution, above the law.
>> And you can't do that.
He didn't have enough of a
mandate to behave like a pharaoh.
>> SENNOTT: The declaration
gave Morsi the ability to take
"any and all actions"
that he alone deemed necessary
to protect the country.
>> We had the making of a dictator.
This went way beyond anything
that Mubarak had done.
>> SENNOTT: One quarter of the constitutional assembly
resigned in protest.
The Islamists rammed through
their new constitution regardless.
>> And that was the turning point.
For me personally, that is when
I said, "No, no, no, no,
this cannot be my president."
>> SENNOTT: In April 2013,
a group of activists
started a petition calling
for Morsi to step aside.
They gave their movement
a name: Tamarod.
>> "Tamarod" means "rebel."
What Tamarod managed to do is
that they started gathering
signatures for a popular
impeachment of Morsi.
>> I saw these petitions.
There was just a list of grievances and,
"These are the reasons why we have lost
faith in you, and we demand early elections."
>> SENNOTT: Tamarod called for
mass protests on the first
anniversary of Morsi's
inauguration: June 30, 2013.
But Morsi and his advisors
didn't take it seriously.
>> They did not really believe
that the 30th of June
will be a decisive day.
They thought that it will come and go.
>> SENNOTT: Member of Parliament
Amr Moussa set up a meeting
with the highest-ranking member
of the Muslim Brotherhood,
Khairat El-Shater.
>> I told him that Tamarod
insisted on one point:
early presidential elections.
So it was not talking about any
change or forcible change in the
regime, but early elections.
Early elections is a very
reasonable thing.
>> SENNOTT: U.S. officials
didn't think so.
Anne Patterson, U.S. ambassador
to Egypt, was uncomfortable with
forcing a democratically elected
president from office.
>> It was very clear from her
public announcements that Anne
Patterson thought that Egyptians
should swallow this pill and be
content with a miserable regime
because the alternative
is much worse for us.
>> SENNOTT: But by mid-June,
Tamarod claimed to have
collected 22 million signatures,
nearly half of all eligible voters.
Worried about what could happen
on June 30, General El-Sisi went
to see Morsi and urged him
to consider Tamarod's demands.
>> And that meant a change
in cabinet, a prime minister
from the opposition, a change
in the prosecutor general,
and the president actually
acquiesced to all those demands.
>> SENNOTT: But Morsi
refused to step aside.
>> The idea that
that focused demand would be
the resignation of the president
to us made absolutely no sense.
If the street becomes the way
of removing a democratically
elected president one year into
his mandate, then no other
presidency will survive in the future.
(phone ringing)
>> SENNOTT: With hours to go
before Egyptians took to the
streets, President Obama tried
repeatedly to reach Morsi.
>> He called him
for three or four times.
He insisted to Mr. Morsi
to receive the call.
He received it,
and it was about 30 minutes.
>> SENNOTT: Did President Obama
try to offer anything to allow
him to hold onto power and to
build a more conciliatory government?
>> We refuse.
Mr. Obama, call to Mr. Morsi, Said in the last sentence
"If there is a military coup, we can't prevent it."
>> SENNOTT: The White House declined comment to Frontline,
but Morsi has clung to the idea
that he was the target of a U.S. plot.
>> SENNOTT: Then came the day. The protest was larger
than anyone had imagined.
(crowd roaring)
>> I just couldn't believe it.
I was dumbfounded
by all these people coming out.
Already, there were millions
filling all the squares,
the midans of Egypt.
Not only in Cairo, but in Alexandria,
in the provinces, everywhere.
>> The mood was amazingly jubilant.
It's people power.
And this is something
electrifying when you feel it.
Women: They were chanting against Morsi They were chanting against Muslim Botherhood.
Some people were chanting for the Military.
>> SENNOTT: At the palace, the inner circle of the Muslim
Brotherhood had a different
interpretation of what was happening.
>> What was happening on the
street was not opposition.
What was happening on the street
were disgruntled citizens
that feel that the government's
performance was way below their
And that wasn't the blame of the
president, that was primarily
the undermining of the old regime.
It was his decision not to resign.
>> SENNOTT: Instead of conceding, Morsi rallied his supporters.
The Muslim Brotherhood organized
several demonstrations and
sit-ins of their own.
The biggest was at Cairo's
famous Raba'a al-Adawiya mosque.
>> There are millions
of supporters of Morsi, too.
Not as large as the anti-Morsi
crowd, it is true, but they're
in a very close proximity.
We're talking only kilometers
apart in a city that is very
congested and very, very heavily
populated.
The possibility of civil war was
as high as it could have ever been.
>> Egypt was really on the brink
of civil war.
This regime was so divisive
that for the first time,
we saw Egyptians pitted
against each other.
>> SENNOTT: On July 1, General
El-Sisi issued an ultimatum.
>> SENNOTT: Morsi had 48 hours to meet the people's demands,
or else.
Morsi responded, daring El-Sisi to come and get him.
>> He made no concessions, very Mubarak style.
And you know, in a sense,
the writing was on the wall
when the military made
that first ultimatum.
>> SENNOTT: El-Sisi pressed on,
reaching out to the crowds
still in Tahrir Square.
>> The army made its appearance with air shows trailing the
Egyptian flag with the colors.
Drawing hearts. And personally, I thought
this was a bit too cheap,
but apparently it wasn't.
And people thought,
"That is the answer."
>> SENNOTT: On July 3rd, an elite Army unit was
dispatched to the Palace.
>> He didn't foresee that it would come about this way.
Members of the Republican Guard,
the Presidential Guard,
came into the room,
told the president that
he is in their safeguard,
that they would not allow
anything to befall him, any harm
to befall him, but that they
cannot let him communicate with
the outside world or leave the room.
>> SENNOTT: By the end of the
night, Morsi was in military
custody along with a dozen other
high-ranking members of the
General El-Sisi took over.
>> SENNOTT: Tahrir Square erupted.
(people cheering)
(people yelling angrily)
>> SENNOTT: But at the Raba'a
al-Adawiya mosque, men and women wept.
>> This definitely was very painful.
We lost the country on July 3rd.
But there was a quick decision
made, a quick realization that
we don't have to tolerate this.
We will fight this.
>> SENNOTT: The Muslim
Brotherhood dug in.
At the Raba'a al-Adawiya mosque, they set up a field hospital,
a press center, and established
a kind of human shield
to protect their leaders inside.
The son of a senior Muslim
Brotherhood official became
their principal press spokesman.
He claimed the high moral ground.
>> What's at stake here is not Morsi.
What's at stake here is the fact
Egyptians were believing
in the idea of democracy.
What guarantees do they have
if the military now sets a new
roadmap for a new presidential
election, a new parliamentary
election and a new constitution,
and then if it doesn't like the
results, to derail it all at once?
>> I know they still think it is
the first civilian president
that was ousted undemocratically,
unconstitutionally and so on.
But they have to face it.
Never in human history has there
been such an outpour of rage
against a regime,
and it happened that President
Morsi was head of that regime.
>> SENNOTT: The first shots were
fired at dawn on July 8th, just
five days after Morsi's arrest
and a few blocks
from the Raba'a Mosque.
(gunshots and sirens)
>> SENNOTT: The army says they were provoked.
The Brotherhood says
the military started it.
Nothing was clear.
But after several hours,
three soldiers and more than
50 pro-Morsi demonstrators were dead.
I arrived back in Egypt a few days later.
I had never seen Cairo like this.
Pro-Morsi marches blocked traffic everywhere.
Divisions were evident
at every street corner.
>> SENNOTT: I wanted to know what Mohammad Abbas
thought of all this.
Abbas had lost his bid
for parliament and grown
disillusioned with Morsi, but
I couldn't imagine he was happy
with a military takeover.
Mohammed!
>> How are you?
>> SENNOTT: I'm good, how are you?
I asked him about military rule.
>> SENNOTT: So you describe this
as a military coup?
>> Yes, of course.
It is a military coup, nothing else.
(gunshots and screaming)
>> SENNOTT: Later that night, Abbas and I were caught up
in a pro-Morsi protest
headed towards Tahrir square.
The march was blocked by police.
Rock throwing, tear gas and shots followed.
>> Tear gas, tear gas!
>> SENNOTT: By the end of the evening, another seven
protesters were dead.
These confrontations were
quickly becoming almost daily affairs.
>> Both sides appear to be
allowing this violence to go on,
and this in a way allows the
military to say the Brotherhood
are criminals and they all need
to be locked up.
At the same time, I don't
understand why Brotherhood
leaders are ordering marches
and putting the lives of their
own supporters at risk.
>> SENNOTT: The next day
the Muslim Brotherhood
held a press conference.
They had wheeled out the wounded
and praised their martyrs
to a roomful of reporters.
>> SENNOTT: I asked Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohamed
Beltagy about the criticism that
they were intentionally putting
their supporters at risk.
There are people
who say that this is a
strategy by the Muslim
Brotherhood to create martyrs
for the movement.
>> (translated): It is strange
that you are saying that a
peaceful protester benefits from
being killed, but you do not
address who is doing the killing.
Who else in the world can attack
peaceful protesters?
Do you want me to go home and
surrender and tell myself that
our reality is a military coup?
I have a right to protest
peacefully and reject this
military coup.
>> SENNOTT: I asked another of the leaders, Essam El-Erian,
how long the Muslim Brotherhood
could hold out.
>> SENNOTT: The situation was only escalating.
On July 24th, General El-Sisi
called for an end to the
demonstrations at the mosque
and for the people to show him
their support.
>> SENNOTT: That Friday, millions of Egyptians gathered
again, answering El-Sisi's call.
>> The animosity against the
Brotherhood was so intense that
there really did seem to be a
desire to just wipe them off the
political playing field.
And I've had conversations with
people where their solution is,
you know, in Arabic translates
to, "Just round them all up."
How do we function as a country
when we've rounded up
15% of the dissidents?
>> SENNOTT: There was now no stopping the momentum.
A series of meetings with high-
level envoys from the United
States and Europe failed to
convince General El-Sisi to hold off.
Threats of withholding U.S.
military aid were ignored.
Then, at 7:00 a.m. on August 14,
the police surrounded
the Raba'a al-Adawiya mosque.
Soldiers blocked
all the exits from the square.
>> The Brotherhood felt that if we are going to die today, then
there is no better place to die
and there's no better cause to
die for than to say, "Not all
Egyptians supported this."
>> SENNOTT: For over 12 hours,
the protesters were subjected
to tear gas and snipers.
>> (crying): Mama!
>> SENNOTT: The ferocity of the campaign was historic
in its brutality.
By day's end, hundreds lay dead.
The Raba'a al-Adawiya mosque was in ruins.
The Brotherhood had once again been crushed,
driven underground.
Leaders I met and interviewed are on the run or, like Mohamed
Morsi, in detention, accused of treason and inciting violence.
Mohamed Abbas has fled the country.
The future, he fears,
is more dictatorship.
The deep state is still in charge.
>> Go to PBS.org/Frontline for a closer look at Egypt's
deep state.
>> It is really very deep.
>> This underlying set of
>> A timeline of the two years
of turmoil following Egypt's
revolution.
Additional reporting from our
partners at Global Post.
Plus watch the film again
online and follow Frontline on
Facebook and Twitter or tell us
what you think at pbs.org/frontline.
ptioned by Media Access Group at WGBH
access.wgbh.org
>> For more on this and other Frontline programs, visit our
website at pbs.org/frontline.
Frontline's "Egypt in Crisis" is available on DVD.
To order, visit shoppbs.org or
call 1-800-PLAY-PBS.
Frontline is also available for
download on iTunes.