Former member of parliament Ahmed Eltantawy announced on Thursday, just before his anticipated return home ahead of an expected presidential election run, that Egyptian authorities had arrested two male relatives and three colleagues.
According to Nabeh Elganadi, a lawyer with the independent Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR), at least 10 of Eltantawy’s relatives, friends, and allies, including two of Eltantawy’s uncles, have been imprisoned. He claimed that the State Security Prosecution would detain them for 15 days to examine claims such as membership in a terrorist organization.
Eltantawy is the former head of Egypt’s socialist Karama party and a prominent and relatively independent member of Egypt’s largely pro-government parliament. He will step down in 2020.
He had been in Beirut for many months, where he claimed to be attending graduate school. He announced on Facebook in March that he will run for president in 2024 “to offer the civil democratic alternative.”
He also said that he would return to Egypt in the first week of May. Despite his reservations about the election’s fairness, Eltantawy said that he intended to run.
“Whoever closes this door in the faces of citizens drives them to seek other paths that the country cannot bear,” he said.
The arrests come as Egypt begins what it believes would be a healthy national political dialogue on a variety of themes, including the present economic crisis.
Under President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, a persistent crackdown on dissent has resulted in tens of thousands of arrests, prompting the discussion as one of many moves aimed at disputing criticism of Egypt’s human rights record.
In 2013, Sisi led the military coup that deposed Egypt’s first democratically elected president, Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohamed Mursi.
After winning presidential elections with 97 percent of the vote in 2014 and 2018, his term was extended to six years by a constitutional amendment.
