- February 8, 2007
- 2 minutes read
Jail of 42 Al-Azhar Students Prolonged, Al Shater’s Files to Military Justice
The Egyptian state security prosecution referred the files of Eng. Khairat Al Shater, the second deputy chairman of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB), and about 40 MB leaders, political figures and businessmen to a military court, on groundless charges including terrorism and money laundry".
This comes as a part of a crackdown that the country is launching against the Muslim Brotherhood due to its attitudes towards political reforms and change in Egypt and to prevent the group from maintaining its national role towards discussing the proposed constitutional amendments or participating in the Shura Council elections scheduled next April .
This took place one day after the president issued, as a military governor, a decree of referring Al Shater and another undisclosed number of MB leaders to a military tribunal, the first case of such a kind since 2001 and the seventh case in the history of the Muslim Brotherhood, the biggest opposition group in the Egyptian parliament.
The Egyptian judicial sources said that Al Shater and the 39 other MB leaders are charged of "financing the Muslim Brotherhood group, about 29 of them are charged of money laundry while 11 others – including Al Shater – are falsely charged of adopting terrorism as a means for achieving their targets"!!. These judicial sources added that most of the defendants are detained, but there are 8 of them are abroad and they will be tried in absentia .
It is worth mentioning that Al Shater has been detained since last Dec. 14, when the State Security Police forces arrested him after some Muslim Brotherhood students from Al-Azhar University performed a sportive parade, which all observers agreed unanimously that this it was only a piece of art for which the students and the group offered an apology.
In a related context, the jail of 42 Azhar students was prolonged for more 15 days.