The death sentences and life imprisonment delivered to its General Guide, its powerful men, its ex-president and grassroots should persuade the Muslim Brotherhood's (MB) fugitives abroad to come face-to-face with reality. In other words, these fugitives and masterminds should sober up from a 6-year stupor to watch their lavishly paid operators in the US and Europe do their best to help perpetrators of criminal and terrorist acts at home, sooner or later, to walk with impunity down the political street again. The MB, which is designated a terrorist group in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, have paid huge sums of money to big US and British newspapers and their writers; and to television channels, to drum up the issue of reconciliation. The MB's fugitives abroad have managed to enlist the help of a number of US Congressmen, led by the hawkish John McCain, to call, deafeningly, for reconciliation, which would be the kiss of life for the MB. In the meantime, panic-stricken that the tragic end of the MB in Egypt will automatically undermine the credibility and integrity of its royal family, Qatar has loosened the strings of its swelling wallet to finance the survival of this terrorist group through reconciliation. Thanks to the appeal guarantees of Egypt's judiciary system, the MB's convicts are now being retried before a new circuit of the Criminal Court in Cairo and in the provinces, where the terrorist organisation committed unprecedented barbaric acts. The retrials will definitely serve justice and yield the same verdicts delivered before by different chief justices. In any case, the government is determined to implement these verdicts, whether they be death sentences or life imprisonment. There is hardly any doubt that without reconciliation, the MB's convicts will one day be led to the gallows. On the other hand, the more fortunate convicts, who may be given a life sentence, will die in their cells of old age; most of the MB's powerful leaders are over 70. The government has slammed the door violently in the face of reconciliation bidders for various reasons. To start with, President Abdel Fatah El Sisi's legitimacy in office is chiefly based on a mandate given to him by millions of Egyptians to fight terrorism, whether home-made by the MB or waged as a war of terror against the Egyptians by external elements. Secondly, reconciliation would help the MB convicts receive a presidential pardon and walk free. But the government would not allow such a painful reopening of the wounds and a disregard for the feelings of the martyrs' families and friends and indeed the whole nation, by allowing the MB to wash their hands of the blood of their victims.
