Two uncles of a former Egyptian deputy who recently announced that he wanted to run for president in 2024, appeared on Thursday May 4 before the State Security prosecution, a human rights activist told AFP. the man.
Currently in Lebanon, former liberal MP Ahmed al-Tantawi announced in March that he would go to Cairo on May 6 and want to stand in the presidential election scheduled for spring 2024 in Egypt.
His uncles were arrested on Tuesday evening, on the eve of the launch with great fanfare of a "
national dialogue
" supposed to bring into the debate an opposition reduced to a trickle since the seizure of power by current President Abdel Fattah al-Sissi in 2013 , after a coup against his Islamist predecessor Mohamed Morsi.
Appearance
"
Mohammed Naguib al-Tantawi and Mohammed Sayyed Ahmed Attiya were arrested on Tuesday evening in Kafr Cheikh
", in the Nile delta, "
and they are appearing (Thursday) before the State Security Prosecutor's Office in Cairo
", a court of exception, reported Hossam Bahgat, director of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR).
The charges against them were not immediately known and special justice in Egypt allows magistrates not to inform the defense of the details of the case.
"
Other friends and supporters of Mr. Tantawi have also been questioned by the State Security Prosecutor's Office
," added Hossam Bahgat, citing at least six names.
The previous presidential election in 2018 saw Abdel Fattah al-Sissi face off against a single other candidate, an unknown to the general public and avowed supporter of the head of state.
For observers, the national dialogue is Egypt's pledge to the international community, which regularly points the finger at its human rights violations in the run-up to this election.
“Preventive prisoners”
At its opening, the former head of Egyptian diplomacy Amr Moussa questioned "
the control of security policies over the economy
" in a country where experts denounce the control of the army (from which Abdel Fattah al-Sissi comes) on the economy.
He also raised the issue
of "preventive prisoners
" often much longer than the legal two years.
In 2022, Egypt, which has 60,000 political prisoners according to NGOs, assured that it had launched a new “
national human rights strategy
” and reactivated its presidential pardon commission.
But human rights advocates note that while presidential pardons released 124 political detainees in the first quarter of 2023, at least 459 others entered prison at the same time.
