Mohammed Morsi, Egypt's deposed President, was charged yesterday with conspiring with foreign groups to commit terrorism in the country, in a significant escalation of the new authorities' attempts to destroy him and his movement.
Morsi is said to have conspired with Hamas, the Palestinian militant group whose stronghold is inneighbouring Gaza, and its Lebanese ally Hizbollah, to "smuggle arms, organise military training for group members, and to stir chaos and threaten national security".
Morsi and most of the rest of the senior Muslim Brotherhood leadership, including its supreme guide, Mohammed Badie, already face a variety of accusations, including incitement to murder. But the new prosecution brings all the detained inner circle together on a single raft of charges.
The statement also brings to an end a lengthy period of detention without trial for some of his presidential advisers, who disappeared during the coup that deposed him in July and have neither been seen since nor formally arraigned. They include Essam el-Haddad, his foreign affairs adviser, who became well-known as Morsi's personal envoy.
Since it deposed Morsi, the army, with the interim government and pro-regime media, has tried to portray the Brotherhood as a terrorist organisation, playing on its admitted relationships with former jihadi groups that have renounced violence.
One spark for the army's decision to remove him was said to be his failure to get to grips with a growing Islamist insurgency in Sinai.
The charges however go well beyond that, suggesting that Morsi and Haddad conspired to undermine the country they were running.
Haddad in particular is an easy target since he was briefed to lead crucial negotiations with Iran, a traditional rival to Egypt, and both Hamas and Israel, performing a middle-man role already established for the country under former President Hosni Mubarak.
