Muslim Brotherhood supporters demand Mursi re-instatement

Hundreds of supporters of Egypt's deposed Islamist president Mohamed Mursi vowed to continue their sit-in at a Cairo mosque on Tuesday and rejected efforts by the EU's top diplomat Catherine Ashton to defuse the political standoff between Mursi and those who deposed him. The European Union's foreign policy chief became the first outsider to see Mursi since he was deposed by the army on July 3, taken into detention and placed under investigation on charges including ***. Despite flying her after dark to Mursi's secret detention facility Egypt's rulers maintained they will not allow him to take any role in ending the turmoil convulsing the country. His fate - and a deadly crackdown by security forces on his supporters - has raised global anxiety about a possible bid to crush Mursi's Muslim Brotherhood, a movement that emerged from decades in the shadows to win power in elections after the 2011 uprising against Hosni Mubarak. Nearly 300 people have been killed in violence since Mursi was removed, including 80 of his supporters gunned down at dawn on Saturday as they marched from a month-long vigil at a mosque in northern Cairo. Egypt's authorities say Mursi is being investigated on accusations including ***, stemming from a 2011 jailbreak when he escaped detention during protests against Mubarak. The Brotherhood says the accusations, including conspiring with the Palestinian group Hamas, are absurd and trumped up to justify his detention. He has not been officially charged.