CAIRO: Egypt's interior minister denied this week the kidnapping of Mahmoud Sha'ban – a member of Mohamed ElBaradei's campaign – and Khaled Talima of the Revolution's Youth Coalition. “The Ministry of Interior did not take any illegal actions toward political activists or any other Egyptian citizen,” a statement from the ministry said. “No citizens are arrested unless there is a prior authorization by the prosecution. “There is always a report with an arrest when the arrested person is transferred to the public prosecution for legal procedures. There is always a commitment to human rights and the law,” said the ministry's statement. Sha'ban, an activist in Alexandria told local media he was abducted shortly after a group Iftar, the meal breaking the fast in the holy month of Ramadan, in Ma'mora, Alexandria and was interrogated for two full days by the state security officers until his release on Sunday. Sha'ban said he was mainly questioned about the financial sources of the ElBaradei campaign and the 6 of April youth movement. Friends and colleagues of Sha'ban reported that he went missing on Friday and started two Facebook pages demanding his release. Sha'ban told al-Dostor website that the officers refused to feed him “until he confesses.” He said the officers accused him of “accepting money from ElBaradei as the financial director of the campaign,” which Sha'ban denied, saying he was only a member of the campaign. He added that the officers who interrogated him told him that the January 25 revolution was “talk the state security is fooling people with” and that Egypt's next president “will be on of us [state security].” The January 25 revolution toppled former President Hosni Mubarak's regime after 18 days, where millions of people took to the streets demanding the fall of the government. Elections are allegedly scheduled for November, but activists worry the military junta and the return of the state security apparatus is a telling sign that transparency and democracy are not on the horizon. BM
