Egypt army head runs for presidency

Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, the general who ousted Egypt's first freely elected leader last July, has declared his candidacy for a presidential election he is expected to easily win. 

Wearing military fatigues and speaking in a nationally televised address , Sisi said it was the last time he would wear an army uniform and that "I give up the uniform to defend the nation" and run in the elections, which are expected next month.

To his supporters, the 59-year-old former army chief is a saviour who can end the political turmoil dogging Egypt since 2011 when a popular uprising ended Hosni Mubarak's three decades of one-man rule.

But his opponents hold him responsible for what human rights groups say are widespread abuses, and fear that he wants a return to authoritarianism.

His announcement came hours after Egypt's interim authorities ordered the prosecution of 919 suspected Islamists and days after 528 were sentenced to death in a separate case.

"I have spent all my life as a soldier for the sake of the country ... I am telling you that I intend to run for the president of Egypt, and this support from you will give me this honour," he said.

Sisi said Egypt was "threatened by terrorists" and spoke of returning the country to dignity.

"It wasn't the army or political forces who ousted the last two regimes; it was you the people. My entering the presidency race doesn't not mean that others shouldn't," he said.

The 59-year-old Sisi is widely expected to win the vote, and restore a tradition of presidents from military background that Egypt had for all but one year since 1952.

He has been the country's most powerful figure since removing President Mohammed Morsi, and Morsi's once politically dominant Muslim Brotherhood has since been declared a terrorist group.

Among his supporters, Sisi is wildly popular. Many see him as the kind of strongman needed to stabilise a country in crisis. But he is reviled by the Islamist opposition as the mastermind of a coup against a freely elected leader.

If el-Sisi becomes president, he will be the latest in a line of Egyptian rulers drawn from the military; a line only briefly broken during Islamist President Morsi's year in office.

Morsi appointed Field Marshal Sisi as both military commander-in-chief and defence minister in August 2012 - a move seen at the time as an attempt to reclaim power from the military, which had assumed interim control after President Mubarak's fall.

But following mass protests a year later demanding the resignation of Mr Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood-led government, it was Field Marshal Sisi who told the leadership to respond to "the will of the people" or risk army intervention.

When Morsi refused, Field Marshal Sisi suspended the constitution and announced the formation of a technocratic interim government.

Since then, more than 1,000 people have been killed and thousands of members of Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood have been detained in a crackdown by the interim authorities, who have designated the Islamist movement a terrorist group.

Morsi and many other senior Brotherhood leaders are currently being tried on a variety of charges, including incitement to murder and conspiring to commit terrorist acts.