In the recordings, published on the website of Rassd, a pro-Muslim Brotherhood news outlet, General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, the defence minister, can be heard denigrating Hamdeen Sabahi, a rival politician, as dishonest and saying to the editor of al-Masry al-Youm newspaper that he should launch a public campaign to grant the minister immunity from prosecution.
Gen Sisi, primary mover of the July 3 coup that toppled the elected government of President Mohamed Morsi, has publicly portrayed himself as above politics, insisting he is reluctant to run for president as many Egyptians are demanding.
But in the high-quality audio he appears to be a deeply involved political player and well aware of his public support. He refers to himself occasionally in the third person as he talks to the editor, Yasser Rizk.
“You should run a campaign with the intellectuals that there should be an article in the constitution that protects General Sisi and protects my position as minister of defence and allows him [Sisi] to return to the position if he doesn’t get into presidency,” his voice is heard saying.
Egypt’s interim authorities, appointed directly or indirectly by Gen Sisi, are awaiting the drafting and approval of a new constitution ahead of parliamentary and presidential elections expected next year.
The recorded snippets are thought to be from an interview with Gen Sisi that al-Masry al-Youm last week published over seven pages, complete with 30 pictures “on the request of readers”. The paper has not denied the authenticity of the recording but has threatened to sue Rassd for reporting “false news”, selectively editing the recordings and defaming the armed forces. Its English-language sister publication, the Egypt Independent, described the audio as “a leaked recording”.
A source inside al-Masry al-Youm said that an editor and two reporters had been suspended over the leak pending an investigation.
The audio snippets raise questions about the relationship between the armed forces chief and the media, which have become heavily pro-military since the coup. Several Islamist TV channels and other news outlets have been shut down. Rassd recently published video footage purportedly taken in early 2013 showing Gen Sisi describing strategies for controlling the media.
The recording has bolstered the profile of Rassd, which means “monitoring”, a media outlet edited from Turkey that has amassed 1m followers on Twitter and 3.3m on Facebook.
Local newspapers and broadcasters have discussed the leaks at length, often ascribing them to shadowy foreign forces. “These leaked recordings appear at a time when the US has decided to cut military aid to Egypt,” Samir Ghattas, an analyst, said in an interview on the ONTV television channel.
“They are aimed at ruining and destroying the Egyptian military institution,” he said. “The US and Israel want to ensure a long-term security to Israel, not only through agreements signed with Arab countries but also by targeting the army; this is what happened in Iraq, Libya and Syria.”
In the recording, Mr Rizk, a veteran of state-controlled media who was appointed editor of al-Masry al-Youm in August, asks Gen Sisi how he would respond if “the masses” asked him to run for president, advising him not to publicly “eliminate the option completely because if the situation changes you don’t want to go back on your word”.
Gen Sisi is heard responding that politicians considering running for president are only doing so because he has not yet announced his intentions. He tells Mr Rizk that Mr Sabahi, a nationalist politician popular among the same urban voters as the armed forces chief, told him recently that he would drop out if Gen Sisi would run for president.
“I did not give him a ‘yes’ or ‘no’,” Gen Sisi is heard saying. “And then the next day he [Sabahi] came out and said that I will not run, and kept saying it.”
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