U.S. Copts Association

By Mohamed Abdel Kader   

The Egyptian parliamentary delegation under the chairmanship of the People’s Assembly speaker Ahmed Fathi Sorour refused to attend yesterday’s Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) session to discuss the report of the parliamentarian human rights committee that calls on the Egyptian authorities to release founder of Ghad Party Ayman Nour for health-related reasons.

The delegation has only sent a message to the session in which it confirmed that Nour receives good medical care in prison and that the Parliamentary Committee on Human Rights visited him and made sure that he was in good health.   

“The Egyptian Judiciary refused to release Nour after it assigned the Prisons Department to refer him to a specialized medical committee, which said that he enjoys good health,” Sorour said.

“It seems that IPU had not enough time to study the exchanged letters between Parliament and IPU, which included the medical reports and court rulings issued against Nour as well as decrees of the public prosecutor in this regard,” he added.

Sorour was dismayed at IPU ignoring an important legal point, namely the fact that Nour is accused of rigging official papers. Whoever committed such a crime should be punished regardless of any personal motives.

“In my capacity as a professor of law and MP for 25 years through which I have been insisting on respecting legitimacy and the law, I’m dismayed at the IPU illegitimate intervention in the Egyptian judiciary,” Sorour said.