Human Rights Monitor turning out to be Brotherhood's rumor-mongering machine
Pro-Muslim Brotherhood channels broadcast from
Qatar and Turkey have teamed up with a group known as "Human Rights
Monitor" in propagating rumors about the execution of Muslim Brotherhood
members who were in Egyptian jails.
Goals
The Muslim Brotherhood founded a number of
rights groups with the aim of addressing western public opinion and projecting
the image of a victim. In this, it wanted western governments to put pressure
on the Egyptian government to release Muslim Brotherhood members in Egyptian
jails.
Most of these groups sprouted following the
dispersal of the Rabaa al-Adawiya sit-in in August 2013. Qatari mouthpieces
promoted these groups and backed them, even financially. They treated them as a
credible source of information about human rights conditions in Egypt.
Human Rights Monitor has a site in English. The
site gives the Muslim Brotherhood the chance to communicate with western
governments and tarnish the reputation of the Egyptian government. The site
keeps criticizing the government and the Egyptian army by pedaling rumors about
them. Turkey hosted a series of conferences by this devious organization.
The International Organization of the Muslim
Brotherhood allocates huge amounts of money for founding studies centers that
at the surface do not appear to be linked to the Brotherhood. The same centers
are dedicated to speaking badly about Egyptian authorities and releasing
reports in English.
The view from inside
Human Rights Monitor is run by a junior female
Brotherhood member called Salma Ashraf. She is a daughter of Muslim Brotherhood
senior member Ashraf Abdel Ghaffar, the former treasurer of the Medical
Association in Egypt. Ashraf was among suspects in the case of the
International Organization of the Muslim Brotherhood. When Muslim Brotherhood
president Mohamed Morsi came to power in Egypt in mid-2012, he issued a
presidential pardon for him and for other people implicated in the case.
Salma appeared on the Qatari news channel,
al-Jazeera, for the first time in early 2014. She appeared to defend female
Muslim Brotherhood members held in Egyptian jails. She fabricated stories about
the rape of these members inside the prisons. She introduced herself as the person
responsible for the Egyptian file at Human Rights Watch. She also said that she
is a political science graduate at a British university.