Cairo: Egypt’s Islamist President Mohammed Mursi Wednesday shuffled Egypt’s spy chief, head of Republican Guard and Governor of Sinai, just after the authorities failed to react over the attack which killed 16 soldiers instead of early warnings.
According to reports, the president ordered spy chief Murad Muwafi to retire in a shuffle of military and intelligence ranks.
In a televised statement, Mursi’s spokesman Yassir Ali said that the president also ordered Defence Minister Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi to find a new head for the military police.
The decision comes several days after a deadly ambush in Sinai killed 16 soldiers, prompting an unprecedented military crackdown in the peninsula, but Morsi’s spokesman did not say whether the attack had prompted the changes.
Morsi appointed Mohammed Rafaat Abdel Wahad Shehata as the interim head of General Intelligence.
Earlier on Wednesday, Muwafi, himself a former governor of North Sinai, issued a rare public statement saying that his agency had forewarning of the weekend attack that killed the soldiers.
But he said the intelligence did not specify where the attack would take place and he had passed it on to the “relevant authorities,” adding that his powerful agency’s role was only to collect information.
The shuffle extended to Abdel Wahab Mabruk, the governor of North Sinai where the attack took place.
According to state-run Nile News TV channel, Morsi has appointed Major General Hamed Zaky as the head of Republican Guards and Major General Maged Mostafa Kamel as the head of Egypt’s Central Security Forces.
Morsi is likely to have reached the decisions with the military, which ruled the country between president Hosni Mubarak’s ouster in February 2011 and Morsi’s inauguration as his successor in June.
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