Egyptian human rights arrests as a result of foreign money
On Wednesday the Egyptain State Higher Security Court ordered the arrest of a second member of one of the main organizations working in this field, "The Egyptian Human Rights Organization," under the charges of "accepting money from a foreign side" and writing reports that are damaging to "national interests."
On Tuesday the state's court ordered the dentention of the secretary general of the Egyptian Human Rights Organization, Hafez Abu Saada, for 15 days in custody, following a report submitted by the chief editor of "Mustaqill" newspaper last week, in which the paper claimed that the organization received a check of US $25,000 from the British embassy in Cairo in order to write a report by the end of September on the repressive measures taken by the police against the citizens of al-Kashah village, a small village in Southern Egypt with a majority of Copts.
On Wednesday, representatives of organizations working in the area of human rights held a press conference in which they said they "feel shocked" over the decision to jail Abu Saada and considered this act "a warning to all workers in this field."
They added that the decision of the court to arrest Mustafa Zeidan, also a member of the organization, who visited the village and wrote the report, ensured that the government is serious in its campaign against human rights organizations.
The Zeidan family stated that the police besieged their house on Wednesday at dawn, "but he was not there." And was not arrested until now.
Two days before he was arrested Saada stated that the check which the weekly al-Mustaqill spoke about has no relevance to the report issued about al-Kashah village.
He added that the check is the second payment of a donation the organization received from the human rights organization at the British House of Commons to finance a project started in 1995 to provide legal assistance to disabled children and women.
He continued that, "Despite of all these things, the organization decided to return the check to the embassy and stopped receiving any aid from official sides."