Top aide to detained Egyptian presidential challenger stabbed, injured

Assailants have stabbed, beaten and seriously injured Egypt’s former anti-corruption chief, who was also a top aide to a detained candidate for the March presidential election, as another presidential hopeful called off his campaign and quit the race earlier this week.

Three men “stabbed” Hisham Geneina “in the face and beat him” and broke “his legs” outside of his home in the capital Cairo on Saturday, said Ali Taha, his lawyer, adding that he was “bleeding at the police station, in attendance of his wife and his daughters, for more than an hour and a half. He has been prevented treatment even though the ambulance has arrived at the station.”

However, other sources said that Geneina was finally admitted to a hospital for due treatment.

Geneina was the head of Egypt’s Administrative Control Authority until March 2016, when President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi decided to relieve him of his duties as a top auditor, accusing him of exaggerating the cost of corruption. At the time, Geneina had reported that corruption had cost the Arab country some $68 billion in four years.

Later on, he was sentenced to prison for allegedly spreading false news, but in December 2016 the jail sentence was suspended.

Local sources said that on Saturday morning Geneina was on his way to the administrative court to attend an appeals court session over a case he had lodged to challenge a presidential decree that sacked him from his post in 2016.

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Geneina was also a leading member of an opposition campaign led by ex-military chief of staff General Sami Anan, who was until earlier this week challenging President Sisi in the March vote. The 69-year-old Anan, however, was reportedly detained and interrogated on Tuesday on charges of committing forgery and other crimes linked to his candidacy announcement.

Anan is the fourth potential opponent of Sisi to be arrested or prosecuted after announcing their pledge to stand in the election.

A day after Anan’s reported detention, rights lawyer and presidential hopeful Khaled Ali announced that he no longer had the intention of entering the presidential race, and that he would not present his candidacy papers.

The presidential election is scheduled to be held on March 26-28, with candidates required to submit all necessary papers to Egypt’s National Elections Authority between January 20 and 29.

Sisi came to power as president in June 2014 after winning a landslide victory in the presidential election held a month earlier by securing nearly 97 percent of the vote. In July 2013, he led a military coup against Mohamed Morsi, Egypt’s first democratically-elected president, after the fall of former dictator Hosni Mubarak in 2011, which led to Morsi’s ouster and imprisonment.  

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Sisi is widely expected to win in the first round of the vote, particularly after the two prominent potential candidates announced that they would not take part in the poll. His main challenger, former Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq, who had declared his candidacy last month, said he would not run in the election.

The Sisi administration has been tough on the followers of the Muslim Brotherhood, the most prominent political party in Egypt which is now outlawed. Many members of the party, including Morsi, have been given harsh sentences while tens of thousands have been arrested awaiting trial.

The crackdown on the Brotherhood has sparked widespread outrage around the world as rights campaigners and governments keep criticizing the Sisi administration for the collective imprisonment of the party members.   

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