- EGYPTFJP News
- January 9, 2014
- 6 minutes read
Beltagy Family Appeals to Free World to Intervene to Stop Injustice Inflicted upon Them
The family of Dr. Mohamed Beltagy, leading member of both the Freedom and Justice Party and the Anti-Coup Pro-Legitimacy National Alliance, currently detained in a high-security junta jail, to the south of Cairo, called on the Muslim world and all the nations of the free world to intervene to lift the injustice, aggression and vindictive repression targeting them.
Currently Dr. Beltagy is being subjected to retaliation, demonization and terror, as a reward for his patriotic and revolutionary role in Islamic, humanitarian and rights issues.
In a statement posted on Dr. Beltagy’s official page on Facebook, the family said it holds the public prosecutor responsible for the deterioration of Dr. Beltagy’s health. The prosecutor is pressing laughable trumped up charges, while he refuses to take any action to investigate the cold-blooded killing of Asmaa (Beltagy’s daughter) and other martyrs killed in the struggle against the junta since the military coup.
The Beltagy family also condemned the public prosecutor’s silence over Beltagy’s total hunger strike, now in its 18th day, in protest against inhuman conditions of his cell, which the prosecutor claims are normal and acceptable.
The family also called on all human rights organizations to move promptly to address the systematic violations suffered by Dr. Beltagy as a defender of public freedoms and human rights since he was a student at university, and a defender of the oppressed – as a member of the National Council for Human Rights.
The family’s statement said that Dr. Beltagy was starting the nineteenth day of the hunger strike, in which he consumes no food at all and drinks only little water, and which he started Saturday two weeks ago in protest of ill-treatment in prison, isolation in solitary confinement and fabrication of criminal cases against him, at a time when prosecutors refuse to take any action in the legal case against murderers of his daughter Asmaa.
The statement pointed that the junta’s Interior Ministry officials pressured, threatened and intimidated Dr. Beltagy to end his hunger strike. When he refused, they banned visits by his family in the first week of the strike, in order to prevent them from knowing about his decision to go on a hunger strike. Later, they tightened visiting procedures by erecting glass barriers between Beltagy and his visitors, so they would not even shake hands. This was rejected by Dr. Beltagy. Authorities then banned all visits for three weeks.
The Beltagy family mentioned that on Tuesday, December 24, they obtained a permit for a visit, adding: "When we went to the heavily fortified Aqrab (Scorpion) prison, security forces verbally abused Sanaa Abdel-Gawwad, Dr. Beltagy’s wife, and one of the female prison guards assaulted her physically, beating her brutally. Then, the prison administration wrote a report of the incident, in which it concocted a false account, overturning the truth of what happened with utter lies. They referred Sanaa and her son Anas to the prosecution service, which released them on bail, refusing to investigate the crimes of verbal and physical aggression committed by prison administration and staff.
The statement also pointed that on the following Tuesday, December 31, the Interior Ministry re-arrested Anas Beltagy, Dr. Beltagy’s son, together with two of his friends, and listed several false charges against all three, planting false evidence as a kind of demonization and hostile propaganda, in an attempt to cover up news of Dr. Beltagy’s hunger strike, and to pressure him to end it. The prosecutor renewed his detention for yet another fifteen days.
The statement further pointed that on the following Wednesday, January 8, the Interior Ministry transported Dr. Beltagy from his cell to a courtroom set up especially at the Police Academy (location of supposed opponent) hours before the beginning of the trial on trumped up farcical criminal charges, such as incitement to murder and violence, in retaliation for his roles in the January 25 Revolution, in the national movement opposed to the Mubarak regime since 2005, his role in exposing corruption and confronting tyranny in his capacity as a patriotic parliamentarian, an opposition politician, university professor, a doctor and a rights revolutionary who defended public rights and freedoms and human rights everywhere.
