Egyptian president-elect swears himself in - San Francisco Chronicle

Cairo --

President-elect Mohammed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood pre-empted the military's choreographed swearing-in ceremony by taking his oath of office a day early in a televised speech to tens of thousands of supporters in Tahrir Square on Friday.

But his rousing tribute to Egyptian sovereignty may be overshadowed by a promise likely to complicate relations with the United States: to work for the release of the Egyptian-born Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, jailed for plotting to bomb a series of New York City landmarks.

The comments appeared to come almost offhandedly in the context of a pledge to free Egyptian civilians imprisoned after military trials during the transition after the ouster of Hosni Mubarak.

"I see signs for Omar Abdel Rahman and detainees' pictures," he said, referring to placards held by the crowd. "It is my duty and I will make all efforts to have them free, including Omar Abdel Rahman."

The Muslim Brotherhood moved quickly to try to shift the focus of Morsi's pledge, saying in a statement on its website that the goal was a potential humanitarian extradition to Egypt and that there was no attempt to question Abdel Rahman's 1995 convictions for plotting terrorism against targets in the United States or Egypt.

The comments could deepen existing U.S. suspicions of Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood, an 84-year-old Islamist group with a long history of opposition to the policies of both the United States and Israel.

Abdel Rahman is serving a life sentence at the Butner Federal Correctional Institution in North Carolina. He was also convicted of plotting to kill Mubarak during a planned visit to New York in 1993 that never materialized, and was widely suspected - but never convicted - of involvement in the 1993 car bombing of the World Trade Center.

Signs calling for his release are always on display at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo and at almost every major gathering in Tahrir Square. Morsi's pledge to seek Abdel Rahman's release is likely to play well with the Egyptians who still resent the perception that Mubarak was a lackey to Washington.

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