Pro-Muslim Brotherhood businessmen remanded for more 45 days pending probe into ‘funding terrorist group’ accusations

CAIRO – 4 February 2021: An Egyptian court on Thursday renewed the detention of owner of Juhayna Company Safwan Thabet, Owner of Tawheed and El-Nour stores Sayed el Sawirki, and former Minister of Manpower Khaled el-Azhari for 45 days pending investigations into accusations of funding the terrorist group of Muslim Brotherhood.

 

They are accused of joining an outlawed group, financing a terrorist group, calling for unauthorized protests, inciting violence among other charges.

 

The prosecution has also drawn a number of charges against the three, including: publishing false news about the political and economic situation in the country with the aim of disturbing the public peace; promoting the group’s objectives aimed at undermining confidence in the Egyptian state and its institutions; joining a terrorist group and receiving funding for a terrorist purpose.

 

Also, on December 3, 2020, the security services arrested Al-Sweirki, for an accusation of “financing a terrorist group.” In January 2015, the Agouza Misdemeanor Court in Giza acquitted the owner of the shop of “Tawheed and Al-Nour” of the charge of “insulting the Egyptian flag”, as shoes with the flag were sold in his chain of stores. In 2002, the court sentenced Swirky to 7 years in prison on charges of combining 5 wives simultaneously and forging divorce slips, and marrying with the help of legal marriage officers, and then the sentence was reduced to 3 years after the appeal in 2003.