CAIRO: On Monday April 30, the Supreme Security Prosecutor s office started its investigations into Sabry Amer and Ragab Abu Zeid, two parliament members affiliated with the illegal group the Muslim Brotherhood. The two members were taken into custody at Menufiya city on Sunday, April 29, during a meeting they were holding with some members of the Brotherhood to discuss the coming Shura elections, according to Mohamed Habib, Deputy Leader of the Muslim Brotherhood. Nine other Brotherhood members from Menufiya were detained along with them. Habib told The Daily Star Egypt that the two members were free by Sunday afternoon. Mohamed Khalil Kwaitah, a parliament member from the National Democratic Party (NDP) told The Daily Star Egypt that the prosecutor s office filed a memo with the People s Assembly through the Minster of Justice in order to proceed with the investigations. According to the constitution, as Habib indicated, parliament members cannot be detained or investigated without removing their immunity unless they are caught committing a crime. Kwaitah confirmed that there is a constitutional principle that prohibits the detainment of any parliament member unless they are committing a crime, and believes that the two members must have been doing something more serious than what was published in the press, [holding a Brotherhood meeting to discuss Shura elections]. Or maybe the officers who arrested the two members were not aware that they were parliament members when they detained them, Kwaitah added. Habib believes that the members were taken as if they were seen committing an act of terrorism or dealing drugs, which are the two major crimes that the emergency law that allowed the government to detain them, is used for. The two members were only holding a meeting with other members of the Brotherhood group to plan the coming Shura elections, Habib said. Does the government perceive planning elections a crime? Habib asked. Because that is what the two members were doing when they got arrested. What happened is a big disgrace to parliament and its immunity system, Habib said. According to Habib, this action did not by any means frighten the Brotherhood group. For so long now, the government has passed all limits and used all possible ways to shut down the voice of the opposition and the Muslim Brotherhood's in particular, Habib added. Habib described the government s means in dealing with the opposition groups as abnormal and against all morals. Nabil Abdel Fattah, a political analyst from Al Ahram Center for Strategic and Political Studies, told The Daily Star Egypt that what the government did is illegal . Abdel Fattah perceives the action as an indirect harsh message from the government to the Brotherhood to inform the 88 parliament members affiliated with the group that the parliament immunity will not protect them. The message is also meant, as Abdel Fattah indicated, to make the Brotherhood reconsider their criticism of the government that they openly and excessively express during the People s Assembly sessions. Abdel Fattah believes that the government is using its position in the region as an ally to the USA and their policies in Iraq and Palestine to invoke all legal ways and permit all suitable means to block the opposition or any other undesired political groups. According to Habib, this case is not the first of its kind. A while ago, as Habib indicated, the government detained Hamdin Sobhy and Mohamed Farid Hassanan, who were also parliament members affiliated with the group and turned them into the prosecutor s office to begin to investigate them, disregarding their immunity. The government in both cases could have waited for the People s Assembly to remove the members immunity, which could have happened as the NDP holds the majority of the seats in parliament but it chose to not do so, Habib added. Al-Ahram daily newspaper reported the case on the front page of its Tuesday, May 1 issue. According to Al-Ahram daily the accused members got detained for holding a Brotherhood meeting .
