CAIRO: For the second time, state security forces attacked the house of Mohamed El-Derini, the prominent Egyptian Shia activist and writer, according to his son Ahmed El-Derini, a journalist with Al-Badil daily newspaper.
Ahmed told Daily News Egypt that at dawn of last Monday, during sohour, his father was arrested by state security forces “who also confiscated all his writings, computer disks and CDs.
El-Derini was detained before in 2004 when his writings and CDs were also ceased.
A significant manuscript detailing Mohamed El-Derini’s jail experience in Torah prison where he has been tortured by officials during his first detainment was one of the confiscated items.
“My father has also just completed two scripts for TV series, one tackling Egyptian history and the other concerned with the Sunni/ Shia conflict. He had also just completed a movie screenplay. He was also in negotiations with Egyptian producer Hani Gergis Fawzy over a film about a Christian Egyptian who is kidnapped by an Islamist group, Ahmed El-Derini said.
Until press time, Ahmed was not aware of where his father was taken.
“Our only resort is to launch a media campaign which already began in some independent newspapers, he said.
He added that some human rights organizations have also filed a memo to the public prosecutor about his father’s case.
And to garner more support for his father, Ahmed created a special group on Facebook, the popular social network website.
Mohamed El-Derini was detained for 15 months in 2004 and 2005 and was released after a big campaign headed by the United Nations which considered his detainment “in contravention of the universal declaration of human rights.
According to an interview with Associated Press at the time, Mohamed El-Derini’s main crime was being Shia. He reportedly said that security officials interrogated him after he published his first book about being a Shia Muslim and the Shia community in Egypt.
Iran s rising regional influence has emboldened Egyptian Shias to demand more rights, but has also left them vulnerable under a regime that questions their loyalty and treats all religious groups with suspicion.
In Egypt, some Sunni Sheikhs accuse Shias of being close to “Shia-dominated Iran which makes them fear to have a similar Islamic revolution to that Iran’s 1979 coup, according to AP.
However, Al-Azhar – Sunni Islam s main seat of learning – acknowledges Shiism as a legitimate branch of Islam.
In 1959, then Grand Imam of Al-Azhar Mahmoud Shaltut, issued a fatwa recognizing Shiism as religiously correct .
Egypt s Shia are not a clandestine group: they speak openly in the press of their beliefs and pray freely in Sunni mosques.
But it is political Shiism and its links with Iran that makes the current regime uncomfortable.
In April, 2006 President Mubarak accused Arab Shias of being always loyal to Iran and not the countries where they live .
Around 124 Egyptian Shias have been arrested since 1988 in a series of crackdowns, according to the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR).
