CAIRO, 31 August 2005 — Four members of Al-Ghad party were rounded up yesterday by Egyptian police in Beheira governorate north of Cairo, the party said in a statement. “They were arrested for no legal reason ... they were arrested because they were putting up posters supporting Ayman Nour in the Abu Homous village,” said Nour who is running in Egypt’s first contested presidential elections.
“The four are detained unlawfully. This is an outrageous precedent meant to scare off supporters of the Ghad and deter them from actively promoting Nour,” a statement by the party said. Ghad demanded the immediate release of its members and accused the regime of preventing Nour campaign advertisements from appearing on state-run television. The party also demanded state security forces “refrain from threatening active members”.
The presidential electoral commission has banned Nour’s campaign television spot on the grounds the theme song had been plagiarized, the party spokeswoman said. Gamila Ismail branded the move “one of the dirtiest tricks of the campaign” for the Sept. 7 presidential poll and blamed President Hosni Mubarak’s camp, alleged by the opposition to hold sway over the electoral commission.
“We can’t start our television campaign because the committee says it has received a complaint from someone who claims property of the song. We are in deep trouble now because the song can be heard throughout the clip,” she said.
The song was commissioned by the party to a young Nubian singer called Khaled Yusef but the commission alleges that it draws heavily on another song by poet Kawthar Mustafa used in a film by the famed Yusef Chahine. Commission official Ahmed Selim confirmed that the clip had not been approved after Mustafa and the singer who interpreted the song — Mohammed Munir — filed a complaint. “Even if this was the case, the matter should go to court, they have no right to stop our television campaign,” Gamila said.
Meanwhile, Egypt’s state security prosecutor yesterday extended for 15 days the detention of four members of Muslim Brotherhood, the country’s largest Islamic group, including one of its leading figures.
The four were arrested in a government crackdown after the group staged a wave of pro-reform protests across the country on May 6. They were jailed for belonging to a banned organization and for organizing unauthorized protests.
Prosecutor Hisham Badawai renewed the detention of prominent Brotherhood figure Essam El-Erian and the three others under emergency laws introduced in 1981. The law allows suspects to be held for up to six months without trial and for their re-arrest if freed.
