MOSCOW. Nov 6 (Interfax) - The Russian president's special representative for Africa has claimed that the Egyptian military remains an essentially secularist institution.
At the beginning of the Arab Spring there emerged rumors that Egypt's armed forces have become less secular since the times of Presidents Gamal Abdel Nasser and Anwar Sadat, and that there are many overt and covert supporters of Islamist group Muslim Brotherhood among the officers, the representative, Mikhail Margelov, told Interfax.
"Practice hasn't confirmed surmises of this kind, and there hasn't been any information about any split in the army after the overthrow of the Islamist president [Mohammed Morsi]. The army is doing the pretty hard job of maintaining order on the streets and fighting rabid Islamist terrorist groups," Margelov said.
"The trial of the Islamists led by the overthrown president Mohammed Morsi will go ahead in spite of the fact that it has been put off," the representative said. "It doesn't at all mean that the army leadership of that country will revise its hard line."