CAIRO — Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi speaks publicly of firsthand knowledge of a meeting where opponents allegedly plotted against him. A few months earlier, the most powerful man in his Muslim Brotherhood group, Khairat El-Shater, says he has access to recordings of former military rulers and electoral officials engineering his disqualification from last year's presidential race. In Egypt, those statements are seen by security officials, former members of the Islamist group and independent media as strong hints that the Brotherhood might be running its own intelligence-gathering network outside of government security agencies and official channels. Such concerns dovetail the Brotherhood, which has a long history of operating clandestinely, to suspicion that it remains a shadowy group with operations that may overlap with the normal functions of a state. Brotherhood supporters also demonstrated militia-like capabilities at anti-Morsi protests in December. Another oft-heard charge comes from the Foreign Ministry, where officials complain that the president relies more on trusted Brotherhood advisers than those inside the ministry in formulating foreign policy. The Brotherhood emerged from Egypt's 2011 uprising as the country's dominant political group and Morsi was elected president in June of last year as the group's candidate. "The problem with the Brotherhood is that they came to power but are still dealing with the nation as they did when they were in the opposition," said Abdel-Jalil El-Sharnoubi, former editor-in-chief of the group's website who left the Brotherhood in May 2011. "Because they cannot trust the state, they have created their own," he added. The notion of a state within a state has precedents elsewhere in the Arab World. In Lebanon, the Iranian-backed Hezbollah is the de facto government in much of the south and east of the country and has its own army and telephone network. To a lesser extent, followers of Iraq's anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada Al-Sadr are de facto administrators of Shiite districts in Baghdad and in parts of the mostly Shiite south. In Egypt, the situation reflects a chasm that has emerged since the uprising over the nation's future. In one camp is the Brotherhood, their Islamist allies and a fairly large segment of the population that is conservative and passively inclined toward the ideas of Islam as a way of life. The Brotherhood denies that any of its activities are illegal or amount to a state within a state. "The Brotherhood is targeted by a defamation campaign, but will always protect its reputation and these immoral battles will never change that," said spokesman Ahmed Aref, alluding to claims that the group was running a parallel state. For most of the 85 years since its inception, the Brotherhood operated secretively as an outlawed group, working underground and often repressed by governments. But even after its political success, the group is still suspected of secretive operations. The two most powerful Brotherhood figures, wealthy businessman El-Shater and spiritual leader Mohamed Badie, are seen by many in Egypt as the real source of power — wielding massive influence over Morsi and his government. El-Shater, according to the former Brotherhood members and security officials, is suspected of running an information gathering operation capable of eavesdropping on telephones and email. He was the Brotherhood's first choice for presidential candidate in last year's election but was disqualified over a Mubarak-era conviction. He publicly said last summer that he had access to recordings of telephone conversations between members of the election commission and the military council that ruled Egypt for nearly 17 months after Mubarak's ouster. The conversations, he claimed, were to engineer throwing him out of the race. — AP
