The Cairo Economic Misdemeanour Court Sunday sentenced a lawmaker to two years in prison for smuggling mobile phones from the Gulf emirate of Dubai into Egypt. "Yasser Salah is sentenced to two-year jail term with labour for customs evasion after trying to smuggle 550 cellular phones into Egypt through the Cairo Airport exploiting his parliamentary immunity," the court said Sunday. It added that Salah was also fined LE50,000 ($9,000). "He had to pay LE100,000 in compensation for the Customs Authority to get his mobiles back," the court said. Salah, an MP at the Shura Council (the Upper House of the Egyptian Parliament), was arrested by Cairo Airport authorities last week while trying to smuggle 550 mobile phones, which he hid in a suitcase. A customs panel at the Airport estimated the value of the would-be smuggled mobiles at LE1,109 million ($220,000). The lawmaker was referred to a disciplinary board by Safwat el-Sherif, the chairman of the Shura Council. El-Sherif described the lawmaker as a "bad model of a lawmaker who should not have been elected as a deputy". He was also questioned by a board of the ruling National Democratic Party, to which he belongs. That was not the first time for Salah to be in the amidst of such a controversy. Earlier this year, he had been referred to a disciplinary board for frequenting a gambling casino, which, according to Egyptian law, is not allowed for Egyptians, by using a forged foreign passport. He was then dubbed in the Egyptian media as the "gambling deputy ".
