Egypt accused the United Nations on Wednesday of seeking to “politicize” the death in court of the country’s first democratically elected president Mohammad Mursi by calling for an “independent inquiry”.

Foreign ministry spokesman Ahmed Hafez said he condemned “in the strongest terms” the call by the spokesman for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Rupert Colville, for an independent investigation into Mursi’s death on Monday.

Hafez said it was a “deliberate attempt to politicize a case of natural death.”