Human rights attorney Ibrahim
Metwaly, legal consultant to the family of Giulio Regeni, the
Italian graduate student who was killed in Cairo in early 2016,
has had his provisional detention in jail extended by another 15
days, judicial ources told ANSA Tuesday.
Metwaly was arrested on September 10 at the Cairo Airport en
route to Geneva to participate in a session of the UN Human
Rights Council.
Defense attorney Ezzat Ghoneim, speaking by phone from Cairo,
said Metwaly has been accused of "conspiracy with a UN
director", without providing any names.
Referring to the "Association of the Families of the
Disappeared", which Metwaly founded after his son disappeared
under mysterious circumstances, Ghoneim said his colleague is
also being accused of a list of crimes including "training and
management of a group created against the law".
There's also the accusation of unauthorised contacts with
"foreign parties" and "spreading false information".
Regarding the accusations, Ghoneim said it's "unprecedented
that an activist is prosecuted only for having defended human
rights".
Speaking on the relationship between Metwaly and the family
of Regeni, the Italian researcher who was tortured and killed in
Egypt last winter, Ghoneim said Ahmed Abdallah, president of the
Egyptian Commission for Rights and Freedoms (ECRF) and Regeni
family consultant despite having the title of "engineer", was
the one who instructed Metwaly to contact the Regeni family.
He said, however, that he doesn't know ("I have no idea") if
contact actually took place.
Cairo has denied its security forces had any part in the
torture and murder of 28-year-old Regeni.
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