Free to go THE NEW Cairo Misdemeanour Court ordered on Monday the release of four members of the 6 April Youth Movement who were arrested in March in the wake of a protest which they staged outside the residence of the Interior Minister Mohamed Ibrahim. It is still unclear whether or not the charges against them have been dropped. On 29 March, the youth movement held a protest in front of Ibrahim's house in New Cairo, holding underwear and banners that accuse the ministry of “prostituting” itself to the regime. The protest was dispersed by security forces and four members of the movement — Mohamed Mustafa, Zizo Abdu, Mamdouh Abu Adam and Sayed Mounir — were arrested. They were charged with rioting and resisting authorities. Khaled Al-Masry, the head of the movement's media office, told the daily Al-Ahram that the decision to release the detainees came without any bail conditions. “We do not yet know if it is a permanent release or if it is temporary,” he said. It is unclear whether the case will be referred to trial in the future. Al-Masry also denied reports that an arrest warrant was issued for founder of the movement Ahmed Maher earlier on Monday in the same case. “The news is untrue and up to this moment, Maher has not received any arrest warrant,” said Al-Masry. The release of the 6 April members came after a number of protests by the group calling on the authorities to free them.
No suspension THE CAIRO Administrative Court on Monday overturned a ministerial decree suspending Sheikh Mazhar Shahin, who is well-known for leading prayers in Cairo's Tahrir Square during and after Egypt's 18-day revolution in 2011. Earlier in April, Shahin was suspended as imam (Islamic leader) of Omar Makram Mosque in Tahrir by Egypt's Ministry of Waqf, or Religious Endowments. The charges against him included criticising President Mohamed Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood in his sermons. The 34-year-old imam revealed that the complaint against him reads that he acted like “a TV station or opposition paper” during his Friday sermons. Shahin had been warning of the Brotherhood's monopoly of state institutions before the order to suspend him. Despite the order, Shahin defiantly led the Friday prayers in his mosque on 12 April declaring that he “will continue to speak the truth and will not become a hypocrite in order to satisfy a minister, ruler or group”. The court's cancellation of the Waqf Ministry's order, however, annuls any consequences of the suspension, even including any salary withheld.
Bailing Al-Erian THE CAIRO Misdemeanour Court fined Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) deputy head Essam Al-Erian a sum of LE15,000 in addition to a suspended three-year jail term for insulting television anchor Gehan Mansour during her daily programme aired on the private Dream satellite channel. The senior party leader confirmed on his Facebook account that he would appeal the sentence. The prosecutor-general had referred the case against Al-Erian to the Misdemeanour Court last November after Mansour filed a complaint. Al-Erian had accused Mansour on air of acquiring foreign funds to attack his party in addition to preventing him from stating his opinion freely on her show in early October. The top Brotherhood operative rejected the accusations against him, adding that he tried numerous times to apologise to her. Mansour, however, stated that the only apology she would have accepted would have been an official apology on air. Al-Erian lost internal elections for the chairmanship of the FJP last October to Saad Al-Katatni. He was later appointed to the Shura Council by President Mohamed Morsi.
No-confidence petition KIFAYA Movement has launched a petition campaign to withdraw confidence from President Mohamed Morsi. The campaign has started collecting signatures in Cairo, Kafr Al-Sheikh, Aswan, Suez and Alexandria. Kifaya said in a statement that it has begun to work on the campaign extensively with all the opposition groups across the country. Kifaya named the campaign “Tamarrod”, which means rebellion. It is attempting to collect more than 13.2 million signatures, or more than the number of votes Morsi won in the presidential elections when he garnered just 51 per cent of the votes in June 2012. The movement, which was created in 2003 to oust Hosni Mubarak, said that the goal of the campaign is also to call for early presidential elections. Last February, a number of campaigns to collect signatures on delegating the military institution to manage the state rather than the current regime sprung up in different parts of the country. The campaign was mostly successful in Port Said where resident Nasser Al-Boghdadi, who was collecting the signatures, claimed that he had collected at least 13,600 names.
Free to attack A LEADING member of the Islamist group Al-Gamaa Al-Islamiya, Assem Abdel-Maged, announced his resignation from the group's Shura Council on Friday. Abdel-Maged believes the restrictions and standards imposed on the members of Al-Gamaa Al-Islamiya has made it similar to any other party or group and have made the group incapable of facing the counter-revolution forces. Abdel-Maged revealed in a statement that he will start taking a bolder stance against those he calls “former regime remnants” and their attempts to regain leadership of Egypt's political scene and that he does not want Al-Gamaa Al-Islamiya to be held responsible for his statements. To answer the uproar against his call for peaceful protests not only in front of the High Court, but also in front of the houses of some judges during a recent governmental move to purge the judiciary, he said that he believes Islamists should be in constant revolution on the streets and among the public. Sources within the group said that the group's Shura Council was “dragged into political battles with the opposition because of Abdel-Maged's provocative statement against opposition leaders. Assem Abdel-Maged was among those convicted in the assassination of President Anwar Al-Sadat in 1981. In the same year, he led an armed group following the Jihad Islamist group to attack and occupy the Assiut Security Directorate, killing no less than 97 policemen and civilians in one of the worst terrorism clashes in the Upper Egyptian city. He was injured and arrested in the operation. In 1984, he was sentenced to 25 years in jail. In 1997, however, as a member of the Shura Council of Al-Gamaa Al-Islamiya, he took part in the initiative to stop violence between Islamist groups and security forces and to abandon violence.
