Claim: An X user has claimed that the President of the United States of America (USA), Joe Biden, has accused his Egyptian counterpart, Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, of killing his former boss and deposed president, Mohamed Morsi. The poster claimed the diplomatic rift was after Egypt ditched the American dollar to conduct its trade.
Verdict: The claim is false. A keyword search of the claim did not bring out any result of the US president making such a remark. A check on his X account also did not contain content relating to Egypt. While the claim was made a day after the US president criticised the Russian President for the death of his major critic and opposition figure, it can be alluded to as part of a disinformation campaign against the US president.
Full Text
An X user, @abdullahayofel, recently posted that the President of the United States of America (USA), Joe Biden, blamed his Egyptian counterpart, Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, for being responsible for the death of the deposed Egyptian president, Mohamed Morsi.
Ayofel claimed the US president made the remark following the announcement of Egypt to stop the use of the US dollars to conduct its trade.
The tweet read “24hrs after Egypt declared their intention to trade in local currency, President Biden has accused President Sisi of killing Egypt’s former president Morsi.”
The claim was viewed 283,000 times with 244 comments, 651 retweets and 2,100 likes.
Background
Egypt’s first democratically elected civilian president, Mohamed Morsi, died in 2019 while appearing in court on espionage charges.
Morsi collapsed during a court session and died almost six years after he was forced out of power in a bloody coup.
According to the Egyptian state newspaper al-Ahram, “After the case was adjourned, he fainted and died. His body was then transferred to the hospital.”
Also, the BBC reported that Morsi who spent just a year as president was removed from power after a mass anti-government protests.
The report said the rejection of an ultimatum by its military’s generals, led by Sisi, to resolve Egypt’s political crisis.
“Four months after he was toppled, Morsi went on trial alongside 14 senior figures from the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood movement, accused of inciting his supporters to murder a journalist and two opposition protesters, and ordering the torture and unlawful detention of others.”
Verification
A keyword search on Google Search engine of “Biden accused Sisi of killing Morsi” did not bring out any result to indicate that Joe Biden made such an accusation.
Similarly, a search on the X handle of the president did not contain any information related to Egypt. However, the president on February 16 made a scathing remark against the president of Russia for the death of key opposition figure, Alex Navalny, which coincided with the misinformation. As such, it could suggest that the claim was to shift attention from the death of the Nigerian cyberspace.
This is because the claim was reposted on X by different accounts and there is a copy and paste form of posting by the accounts.
Did Egypt stop the use of dollar for international trade
While the false claim was based on the premise that Egypt has dumped the dollar as a means to conduct trade with other countries, searches on the internet show the information was not reported by credible media organizations.
Google search engine indicated that the information was reported mostly by blogs, with the content of the report bearing the same wordings, with no attribution to where the information was sourced.
The claim, which also went viral on Nigerian X, saw a Special Adviser to Former President, Muhammadu Buhari, Bashir Ahmed, tweeting that: ‘Egypt has officially stopped using the US Dollar as the currency of international transactions. The world is truly changing.”
The tweet had 221 views, 617 comments, 992 retweets and 4,900 likes.
A search on X showed the tweet was copy pasted by several accounts.
Further search uncovered a report by Ahram Online, an Egyptian news website, quoting the newly appointed Personal Representative of President El-Sisi to the BRICS Summit, Ambassador Ragy El-Etreby, saying that Egypt is planning to urge BRICS member states to trade in their national currencies.
The website attributed the statement to the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and stated that the remark was made when Al-Etriby was the representative of the country in the economic block.
A check on the Facebook page of the ministry confirmed the ambassador made the remark and was quoted thus: “Al-Etriby clarified that there are clear presidential directions on the need for Egyptian participation to be active and effective, and that the focus should be on promoting joint cooperation between Egypt and BRICS countries in various priority mechanisms, especially with regard to encouraging financial payments in national currencies to alleviate the pressure of rising cost of hard currencies due to global inflation.”
From the statement, it is clear that the statement did not suggest Egypt was planning to stop the use of the dollar but not to use it when trading with members of the BRICS economic block.
As such, it is misleading to state that Egypt has stopped the use of the dollar for international transactions.
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