Mohamed ElBaradei, Egypt's former vice president, will be sued in court for a "betrayal of trust" over his decision to quit the army-backed government in protest at its bloody crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood. The case, brought by an Egyptian law professor, will be heard in a Cairo court on Sept. 19, judicial sources said on Tuesday. It points to the prospect of a new wave of politically driven lawsuits being brought to court following the downfall of President Mohamed Mursi, whose supporters brought a raft of cases against opposition figures during his year in power. The cases, many of them for "insulting the president", have been criticised by anti-government activists as a form of political intimidation. ElBaradei, former head of the U.N. nuclear agency and co-leader of the secular National Salvation Front, was the most prominent liberal to endorse the military's overthrow of President Mohamed Mursi on Aug. 3 following mass protests. But he made new enemies on Aug. 14 by resigning after security forces used force to crush the protest camps set up by Mursi's Muslim Brotherhood supporters in Cairo, killing hundreds of people. The military's intervention against Mursi has polarised public opinion in Egypt and around 900 people have died in violence across the country over the past week. The case was filed by Sayyed Ateeq, a law professor at Helwan University.
