Al Qaeda Chief Claims US Plotted Morsi's Downfall
BY: FUNMI OJUROYE
Al Qaeda chief Ayman al Zawahiri has accused the United States of "plotting" to overthrow Egypt's Islamist president Mohamed Morsi.
In an audio recording posted to militant Islamist forums, he said the US colluded with the Egyptian military, secularists and Christians to force out Morsi.
Zawahiri, himself an Egyptian, said: "Crusaders and secularists and the Americanised army have converged ... with Gulf money and American plotting to topple Mohamed Morsi's government."
He accused Egypt's Coptic Christian minority of supporting the Islamist president's ouster to attain "a Coptic state stripped from Egypt's south".
They are the militant leader's first public comments on Morsi's ousting, reports Sky News.
The comments came as backers of Morsi staged defiant rallies after the government ordered their protest camps to be broken up.
Supporters of Morsi began to march after Friday prayers, pouring out of several Cairo mosques.
The afternoon rallies passed off peacefully, with demonstrators marching along main thoroughfares in the capital.
By early evening, they held several smaller demonstrations, including by Cairo's Media Production City in the city's outskirts, where security forces fired tear gas after an alleged attempt by protesters to storm the building.
Protesters reportedly tore up the pavement to make barriers as police in armoured vehicles fired barrages of tear gas.
The marches came a day after US Secretary of State John Kerry angered Morsi loyalists by saying Egypt's military had been "restoring democracy" when it deposed the Islamist leader.
In an interview he said: "The military did not take over, to the best of our judgement - so far. To run the country, there's a civilian government. In effect, they were restoring democracy."
A spokesman for the Muslim Brotherhood denounced the comments, accusing Washington of being "complicit" in the coup.
"Is it the job of the army to restore democracy?" asked Gehad al Haddad in a statement.
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