(Photo from official Yasser Borhamy Facebook page)
By: Mahitab Assran
Vice-President of the Al-Da’wa Al-Salafiya (Salafi Calling) Yasser Al-Borhamy has announced that he suing security officials after being questioned by Homeland Security on Thursday night upon his arrival from Saudi Arabia at Borg Al-Arab airport.
The Egyptian Organisation for Human Rights condemned such actions in a statement on Friday, calling it a “flagrant violation of the right to freedom of movement guaranteed by the constitution and international human rights covenants’ standards”. According to the statement this is not the first time security forces have tried to stop Egyptian citizens at airports.
“Since the general prosecution did not file an official order to arrest Al-Borhamy, it is illegal to stop and question him,” human rights lawyer Gamal Eid told Daily News Egypt, “which also means that Homeland Security is back to using its illegal ways of bringing people in [for questioning] like before the revolution; nothing has changed.”
The Al-Nour Party condemned the incident and announced its support for Al-Borhamy’s legal case against security officials. Nader Bakkar, spokesman of the party, said that what happened to Al-Borhamy was “illegal, since they gave him his passport back, which means that there was no reason to stop him” and that “in this case the general prosecution did not issue an official order to stop him, and like all Egyptians he has the right to freedom of travel”.
Bakkar confirmed that Al-Borhamy plans to sue the interior minister and “those who were responsible for putting his name on the watch list”.
