Egypt’s Sabahy: ‘We will not return to Mubarak’s regime’

Former Egyptian presidential candidate Handeem Sabahy said the police state that ruled Egypt prior to Egypt’s 2011 revolution will not return, now that Hosni Mubarak has been released from jail and most of Muslim Brotherhood leaders have been detained.

“There is no way at all that Egypt will suffer again from a police state or any incursion by any security apparatus internally in this country,” Sabahy, also a member of the National Salvation Front that sided with the military in ousting President Mohammad Mursi, said in an interview with Euronews.

He said the Egyptians are capable of confronting any attempts to revive the old regime.

“We will not return to Mubarak’s regime after we got rid of the Brotherhood one. And as our revolution of June 30th, shows, we did not get rid of Mubarak just to allow the Muslim Brotherhood to take over. And just because we’ve now dropped the Brotherhood does not mean we want to restore the Mubarak regime,” Sabahy said.

The leftist opposition leader has thrown his weight behind the military suppression of Mursi’s Islamist supporters. He said the Aug. 14 crackdown on two major Islamist sit-ins in which hundreds were killed was a decision made by the people and carried out by the state security forces “after a period of patience, deliberation and after warnings.”

“The actions during the break up itself were proportionate to the degree of resistance,” he told Euronews, adding that European countries that condemned the dispersal need to understand the context in which they were carried.

Sabahy has also praised Arab countries like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Jordan for financially supporting Egypt.

Gulf Arab states have offered Egypt $12 billion in financial aid.