CAIRO: Medhat Barakat, businessman and chairman of the board of directors of Al-Tariq newspaper, was detained for 15 days pending investigation for allegedly forging ownership documents and selling 6400 feddans of public land.
The Dokki prosecutor made the arrest following an incriminating preliminary investigation into the land-theft accusations.
Barakat will be tried in the Dokki Misdemeanor Court as soon as the prosecutor’s office completes the investigations.
Yehia El-Alash, secretary general of the Journalists’ Syndicate, told Daily News Egypt that the syndicate is “completely not involved in this case , adding that the syndicates only intervenes to help a syndicate member deal with a case involving publishing offenses, stressing that Barakat is not even a member in the Journalists’ Syndicate.
According to Al-Masry Al-Youm newspaper, Consultant Hisham Al-Darandely, of the North Giza prosecutor’s office, said in a report he had filed to the Dokki Misdemeanor Court where Barakat will be put on trial, that Barakat had seized seven different pieces of land on the east and west sides of the Cairo-Alexandria Desert Road.
Barakat had allegedly also “stolen over 1,000 other feddans which the Land Reclamation Authority managed to retrieve at an earlier date.
