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After being held incommunicado for nearly four weeks, ousted Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi was allowed to meet today with European Union envoy Catherine Ashton. Flown by a military helicopter to visit Morsi in an undisclosed location, Ashton described him as “well” and informed about the current crisis. The meeting comes after at least 72 people were killed Saturday when Egyptian police opened fire on a Muslim Brotherhood rally in Cairo. More than 100 were wounded. Speaking from Cairo, Democracy Now! correspondent Sharif Abdel Kouddous says the bloody crackdown on Morsi supporters has polarized the Egyptian population. “There is a very small, but burgeoning movement that’s calling itself ‘The Third Square,’ distancing itself from Tahrir — which has become very pro-military in its rhetoric — and distancing itself from the pro-Morsi rallies,” Kouddous reports. “They’re saying we’re against [both] the military and against the Brotherhood, trying to reconstitute what they say are the goals of the January 25th revolution.”
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