CAIRO: The Public Prosecutor referred Sunday prominent columnist and former TV show host Hamdy Qandil to the criminal court for the alleged defamation of a government employee, Minister of Foreign Affairs Ahmed Aboul Gheit. Qandil was interrogated by the prosecutor earlier in May for allegedly insulting and defaming Aboul Gheit in his column published in the independent Al-Shorouk newspaper. On May 3, Qandil wrote an article titled “The Homeland's Disgrace and that of the Citizen,” concluding it by denouncing the state for normalizing with Israel. “Qandil did not target Aboul Gheit personally. He criticized his performance as a foreign minister,” the columnist's brother and lawyer, Assem Qandil, told Daily News Egypt Monday. “This is our main defense argument,” the lawyer added. Assem Qandil declined to comment further on the case till he looks into the prosecutor's order on paper. In his column, Qandil had fiercely criticized contradictory remarks made by Egypt's Ambassador to Israel and Aboul Gheit. “Egypt's Ambassador to Israel has confirmed that he lives in [a friendly] country, which contradicts earlier statements by the foreign minister, describing Israel as an enemy,” he wrote. Qandil added that the reason the ambassador made this comment was to correct the foreign minister's previous gaffe. Qandil said that the foreign minister uttered his statement “inadvertently.” “Usually words fall from his mouth like garbage falling out of a torn rubbish bag,” Qandil wrote. “Qandil is a writer who has the right to criticize a policy, while the foreign minister [also] has the right to [perceive it his way],” Al-Shorouk editor-in-chief Amr Khafagy told Daily News Egypt, declining to give father comments on the case. Qandil is known for his scathing criticism of Arab regimes. A TV show he used to host was halted more than once in several TV satellite channels. He is a founding member and the former official spokesman of the National Association for Change which is lobbying for constitutional reforms demanded by former UN watchdog chief Mohamed ElBaradei.
