By Marwa Al-A’asar
CAIRO: The Ministry of Interior has procrastinated in implementing an Administrative Court order granting parole to Labor Party Leader Magdy Hussein, said acting Labor Party Secretary General Abdel-Hamid Barakat on Monday.
“The interior ministry and the regime took a stance against the Labor Party years ago,” Barakat told reporters at a press conference held at the Journalists’ Syndicate.
In 2009, Hussein, the newly elected secretary general of the frozen Islamist Labor Party, was handed down a two-year sentence by the Military Court for illegally crossing into the Gaza Strip through a tunnel in North Sinai’s Rafah border. Since the verdict was handed down by a military court, it cannot be appealed.
Hussein, also the former editor-in-chief of El-Shaab, the Labor Party’s mouthpiece, entered Gaza to show solidarity with the Palestinian people following the Israeli offensive against the region in Dec. 2008.
In Aug. 2010, Hussein’s defense team filed a lawsuit against Minister of Interior Habib El-Adly, calling for the release of Hussein on parole for good behavior in prison after having already completed 75 percent of his prison sentence.
Earlier last week, the Administrative Court issued an order obligating El-Adly to release Hussein on parole. Yet the court order has not been put into force.
“There has been a state of deliberate rigidness … towards the Labor Party and El-Shaab newspaper since 2000, which exposed several cases of corruption in different sectors,” said Salah Sadek, a lawyer representing Hussein.
“But the hostile feeling against [the Labor Party] does not justify the violation of the law and judicial orders,” Sadek added.
Hussein’s sentence will be officially completed on Feb. 1.
“Yet we insist that the judicial order must be executed even one day before that time,” Barakat said. “It is a lawful right that neither the party nor Hussein’s family would give up.”
In July 2010, Hussein was sentenced to another year in prison for libel against the son of then-Minister of Interior Hassan El-Alfy through a serious of articles published in El-Shaab back in 1996.
But the public prosecutor halted the July 2010 verdict so that a cassation court could reexamine the case.
Earlier last week, Hussein won the internal polls of the Kefaya Movement for Change to become the movement’s general coordinator, succeeding journalist Abdel-Halim Qandil.
Hussein is known for being an outspoken critic of the regime. He is a former Journalists’ Syndicate board member and the former secretary general of the Freedoms Committee as well.
In 2000, authorities halted the Labor Party’s political activities, stating that its activities threatened national interests. The authorities also shut down El-Shaab.
The Labor Party, Kefaya leaders and other activists threatened to hold an open strike outside the office of the public prosecutor until Hussein is released.
