An Islamist lawyer filed a case with the Administrative Court calling for the cancelation of opposition leader Mohamed ElBaradei's Lawyers' Syndicate membership. Hamed Sadiq, a Salafi lawyer and legal researcher, said ElBaradei should be stripped of his membership because he does not meet the requirements for joining the Syndicate. Sadiq's case memo argues that ElBaradei holds Austrian citizenship, a claim the Nobel laureate denied several times, and that he fails to meet the Syndicate's “good reputation" criteria. “He [ElBaradei] is under investigation in cases related to harming national security and the cases have not been concluded yet," read the memo. Sadiq has previously filed cases against ElBaradei, Popular Current leader Hamdeen Sabahy, and other opposition figures, accusing them of being involved in a Zionist plot to bring down President Mohamed Morsi. The memo also said ElBaradei had been working for “shady foreign institutions for the past 25 years" and that “his work with the Egyptian foreign ministry ended under dubious circumstances". ElBaradei was head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the United Nation's nuclear watchdog, for three terms until 2009. Sadiq is notable for claiming former President Hosni Mubarak has actually been dead for years and that regime officials employed a replacement lookalike during the ousted leader's trial. Al-Dostour Party leader ElBaradei officially joined the Lawyers' Syndicate Saturday night. The opposition leader took the oath in front of the Syndicate's chairman Sameh Ashour. Al-Dostour member George Ishak stated on his official Twitter account that ElBaradei could now use his Syndicate membership, which grants him the right to practice law, to collect signatures and file cases against the regime. The event was criticised by members of the Syndicate board who belong to the Muslim Brotherhood and make up a majority of the board. They complained of not being informed of the procedures and not being invited to the meeting, unlike other members who were invited. “I have always been a lawyer and my father was a lawyer. All the issues we are discussing right now in Egypt are political and legal so I felt like I needed to go back to law and am happy to join the Syndicate," ElBaradei said during an interview on the ‘Gomla Mufeeda' talk show Saturday night. His father, Mostafa ElBaradei, was the long-time chairman of the Lawyers' Syndicate and was known for his opposition against the regimes of former presidents Gamal Abdel Nasser and Anwar Al-Sadat.
