CAIRO: Lawyer for a number of the detainees in the Hezbollah cell case, Abdel-Moneim Abdel-Maqsoud filed a motion at the State Council Sunday against Interior Minister Habib Al-Adly and the State Security Public Prosecutor for the unlawful detention of the suspects.
In the motion Abdel-Maqsoud argued that the detainees were held in state security headquarters for four months since their arrest last November before the case was made public. The lawyer said that this was an unlawful and unconstitutional location to hold suspects.
According to Abdel-Maqsoud, there are designated places to hold detainees for such periods of time stipulated under the first article of Law 396 of 1956, and state security headquarters is not one of them.
The detainees being held in Egypt on charges that they were carrying out operations for Hezbollah might be referred to military courts once investigations are complete, local newspaper reports said.
Abdel-Maqsoud had previously told Daily News Egypt that only after the case was announced by the prosecutor general were the lawyers allowed to attend the interrogations of their clients.
“We finally were allowed to attend the investigations. Two of my clients were connected to [Samy Hany] Shihab [the alleged Lebanese ringleader] but they said that no operations were planned in Egypt, but rather for outside Egypt, he said at the time.
The detainees can be referred to military courts if they are being charged with conspiring with foreign entities and planning attacks on Egyptian targets.
The defense team of the detainees has admitted the possibility exists, but one of the lawyers, Montasser Al-Zayat, expected the detainees will be referred to the State Security Supreme Court.
Egypt has currently detained 25 suspects and is searching for 24 more in the Sinai Peninsula. Charges against the suspects encompass terror activities and targeting Israeli and foreign tourists in Egypt.
Hezbollah have claimed that the group, which they say numbers no more than 10, were in Egypt to offer funds and arms to Hamas in the Gaza Strip along the Sinai border.
