Public Prosecutor for the Upper Egyptian Qena governorate Mohamed Attiya ordered that MP Mohamed Mandur, representative for the Deshna constituency, be jailed for a four-day period on charges of "incitement to stage rallies," "assaulting a public employee" and causing damage to the Deshna police station when Mandur and his supporters allegedly "stormed" it. Mandur told public prosecutors in Qena, led by chief prosecutor Abdel-Aziz Younis, that he had "neither stormed the police station nor insulted investigators." Rather, he insisted he had come to police headquarters in order to "calm the situation" after a police assistant had arrested two of his representatives for not carrying national identification cards. The defense team, which includes chairman of the Egyptian Bar Association's Qena and Red Sea branches Fathi Soweini, called for further investigations by a neutral security service. Defense lawyers claim that the investigation department's two deputy chiefs -- police officers Ahmed Nur-Eldin and Ahmed Tarek -- had "faked" an official report charging Mandur with assaulting a policeman inside the station. Defense lawyers demanded an inspection of the scene of the alleged incident, citing testimony from the police station's engineering department that the station could not possibly be "stormed" by a single individual. They went on to demand Mandur's immediate release. Several of Mandur's relatives protested his detention before the courthouse. Translated from the Arabic Edition.
