By Mai Shams El-Din
CAIRO: Alexandrian parliamentarian Hassan El-Brins was hospitalized Friday following a car accident believed to be intentional, the Freedom and Justice Party said.
“He believes that the car hit him intentionally,” FJP MP Mohamed El-Beltagy told Daily News Egypt Friday, adding that criminal intent couldn’t be ruled out.
The accident came after El-Brins, FJP member and deputy head of the People’s Assembly’s health committee, said he received death threats following the committee’s recommendation to move ousted president Hosni Mubarak to the Tora Prison Hospital.
Akram El-Shaer, head of the committee, also said he received similar threats after the committee’s report found that, contrary to official statements, one of the prison’s hospitals was fully equipped to accommodate Mubarak, who’s on trial on charges of ordering the killing of protesters and is in a hospital on the Cairo-Ismailia Road.
El-Brins’s car was hit by a lorry near Kafr El-Dawar city, El-Beltagy said.
The state news agency MENA said his car had collided with a lorry pulling a trailer. His party’s website said he had been rushed to hospital by ambulance after his car was chased and shunted in an effort to make it overturn, eventually causing it to collide with the lorry.
The Ministry of Interior denied in a statement claims that El-Brins was wounded in a drive-by gun shooting. It described it as a “normal accident” when the MP’s car hit the back of a lorry as the latter attempted to take a U-turn on Alexandria-Cairo Agricultural Road.
El-Brins’ accident came less than 24-hours after Islamist presidential hopeful Abdel Moneim Abol Fotoh was attacked and his car stolen Thursday night.
“The interior ministry is politically responsible for the security vacuum even if the two accidents have no criminal side,” El-Beltagy said.
“Our struggle with the ministry continues inside the PA, as we insist on the full restructuring of the ministry and serving justice against whoever committed crimes of torture against the Egyptian people.”
He added that the political responsibility over the Port Said massacre, killing the protesters and the political trial of the interior minister are still issues the parliament has to fight for.
The minister of interior and the purging of the entire police force have been the focus of numerous sessions of the parliament, which convened last month. –Additional reporting by agencies.
