Dozens of people were arrested, including at least two journalists, according to the Egyptian Center for Economic and Social Rights. No casualties were reported.

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El-Sissi is a former army general who's overseen an unprecedented political crackdown, silencing critics and jailing thousands.

As defense minister, he led the military's overthrow of elected but divisive Islamist President Mohammed Morsi in 2013, amid mass protests against his brief rule.

On Friday night, dozens of protesters gathered in the capital, Cairo, near Tahrir Square, the epicenter of the so-called Arab Spring uprising that toppled longtime autocrat Hosni Mubarak in 2011.

"This is a very important development because this was the first such protest against the rule of el-Sissi," said political scientist Mustafa Kamel El-Sayed of Cairo University. He said it "could lead to more protests in the future."

There were also small protests in other cities, including the Mediterranean city of Alexandria. The demonstrations came directly after a soccer game in Cairo between Al Ahly, Egypt's biggest team, and its archrival Zamalek.

The protesters were responding to a call by a self-exiled businessman who has claimed corruption by the military and government without providing evidence.

In viral social media videos posted over the past weeks, Muhammad Ali has alleged his contracting business witnessed the largescale misuse of public funds in the building of luxurious hotels, presidential palaces and a tomb for el-Sissi's mother, who died in 2014.

The allegations came as economic reforms and austerity have squeezed Egypt's lower and middle classes badly.

In a rambling speech on Tuesday, el-Sissi angrily dismissed the corruption allegations as "sheer lies." However, he said he would continue building new presidential residences for the good of Egypt. "I am building a new country," he said.

He portrayed Ali's videos as an attempt to weaken Egypt and undermine the public's trust in the military and warned Egyptians against protesting or repeating the 2011 uprising.

For years, Egypt has been battling a long-running Islamist insurgency in the northern Sinai Peninsula, which borders Israel, that is now led by an Islamic State group affiliate. El-Sissi's government also has the backing of the United States and other regional heavyweights like Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Israel.

Human Rights Watch on Saturday urged Egyptian authorities to protect the right to peaceful protest.

"President el-Sissi's security agencies have time and again used brutal force to crush peaceful protests," said Michael Page, deputy Middle East and North Africa director at HRW. "The authorities should recognize that the world is watching and take all necessary steps to avoid a repetition of past atrocities."

Egyptian authorities did not immediately comment on the protests. El-Sissi was in New York Saturday to attend the United Nations summit meetings, the state-run MENA News Agency reported.

El-Sissi was elected president in 2014, and re-elected last year after all potentially serious challengers were either jailed or pressured to exit the race.

Changes to the country's constitution allowed el-Sissi to remain in power until 2030. The change, which was adopted earlier this year in a national referendum, also further enshrined the military's role in politics. These moves are seen by critics as another step back toward authoritarianism.

Later Saturday, the Interior Ministry, which oversees the police, said security forces had killed a suspected militant leader from the Hasm Movement. It said two police officers were also wounded in the shootout in northern Cairo's el-Mataria neighborhood.

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In the article, titled "Whoever Thinks El-Sissi Is Failing Should Peruse the Bible of the Jews," Tawakkul accuses Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi of destroying Egypt in accordance with a plan "that has been set out in the Jewish Bible for over 3,000 years."

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He explains that an examination of the policy of el-Sissi, whom he dubs "General Israel," reveals that he is operating according to the Book of Isaiah. It should be noted that this theme of calling el-Sissi a Jew and accusing him of serving Israel joins other anti-Semitic themes which occasionally feature on Muslim Brotherhood media, as well as on the media in Qatar, which supports the Brotherhood, and especially on Al-Jazeera.

The following are translated excerpts from Tawakkul's article:

"The devastation that has reigned for the past six years [since el-Sissi's] coup against [former Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi] proves that the impudent el-Sissi has a most ancient presidential plan, that has been set out in the Jewish Bible for over 3,000 years. The following verse appears in one of the books of the Jews, in chapter 19 [Isaiah 19:5-8]: 'The waters of the River [Nile] will dry up, and the riverbed will be parched and dry. The canals will stink; the streams of Egypt will dwindle and dry up. The reeds and rushes will wither, also the plants along the Nile, at the mouth of the river. Every sown field along the Nile will become parched, will blow away and be no more. The fishermen will groan and lament, all who cast hooks into the Nile; those who throw nets on the water will pine away.' Is that not what Balaha [a derogatory name for el-Sissi] is doing in Egypt [?]…

"It is as if the books of the Bible … describe the destruction of Egypt and the looting of its treasures by the oppressive general who has taken control of it, who is depicted in the Bible as a villain who steals all of [Egypt's] bounty and its treasures of gold and silver. The current situation in Egypt is that a handful of oppressive generals and corrupt tyrants have plundered Egypt's treasures and sold them.

"Let us now analyze the important clauses and verses of the Jewish-Biblical presidential plan of the impudent el-Sissi. Let's begin, [following] the order in which the information appears in the Bible, in one of the texts written by the rabbis against Egypt, which says: 'And I will set the Egyptians against the Egyptians: and they shall fight every one against his brother, and every one against his neighbor; city against city, kingdom against kingdom' [Isaiah 19:2]. Does this text not refer to the provocative mobilization of the media [loyal to el-Sissi] and to [its] ongoing incitement against those loyal to Islam and against the secular opposition? Does [this text] not relate to the severe political polarization, to the division which prevails in the Egyptian street, and to the internal war in all the cities of Egypt to which [el-Sissi] will yet lead us, as is happening now in the Sinai area[?]…

"Another text written by the Jewish religious scholars in which they attack Egypt reads: 'And the heart of Egypt will melt in its midst' [Isaiah 19:1]. This sentence clearly implies that the immense human, economic and military resources of Egypt will be wasted and consumed by internal conflict … and not [invested] in the struggle against the external Jewish enemy."

Reprinted with permission from JNS.org.

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The state TV said the 67-year-old Morsi was attending a session Monday in his trial on espionage charges when he blacked out and then died. His body was taken to a hospital, it said.

Morsi, who hailed from Egypt's largest Islamist group, the now outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, was elected president in 2012 in what some considered the country's first free elections following the ouster the year before of longtime leader Hosni Mubarak as part of the Arab Spring uprising in the region.

The military ousted Morsi in 2013 after massive protests and crushed the Brotherhood in a major crackdown, arresting Morsi and many others of the group's leaders.

The post Mohammed Morsi, Egypt's ousted Islamist president, dies in court appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.

Morsi, who was elected in 2012 following Arab Spring, was ousted in 2013 after a popular uprising.

It is unclear what his cause of death was.

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