The prosecutor general’s office has ordered that Deputy Head of Al-Wasat Party Essam Sultan remain in custody for 15 days pending investigations, state-run MENA reported.
Sultan was arrested along with head of the party Aboul Ela Mady early Monday. They were moved to the Tora prison complex, where a team of officers from the prosecution started investigations against Sultan for three complaints of incitement of violence.
The deputy head is accused of inciting the torture, kidnapping and murder of several citizens near Rabaa Al-Adaweya, where supporters of former president Mohamed Morsi have been encamped for over a month. The complaints also allege that Sultan incited the burning of public property.
Investigations are set to continue on Tuesday.
Gamal Eid, a human rights lawyer at the Arab Network for Human Rights Information, said the most important thing regarding these arrests of people who belong to the “Islamic current” is “everything happens according to the law.”
Misr Al-Qawia Party Head Abdel Moneim Abul Fotouh said on Twitter the arrests of Mady and Sultan “take us back to the time before the 2011 Revolution when charges were fabricated by State Security, now changed to Homeland Security, officers.”
“Shame on the authorities for targeting the men and youth of the 2011 Revolution,” he added.
Al-Wasat Party said in a statement on Monday it condemns the arrests as well as the “manner in which it they were carried out, which brings us back to an era we thought was gone.”
Sultan was interrogated in May after being summoned by Judge Tharwat Hamad for making statements suggesting that a number of judges accepted bribes and gifts.
Judge Hamad conducted an investigation Monday with Head of Misr Al-Hurreya Party Amr Hamzawy after a lawyer from Sultan’s office filed a complaint in June accusing him of insulting the judiciary in a tweet he wrote.
“I made it clear what I meant by the tweet and how distant it is from insulting the judiciary,” he wrote on Twitter. He added that his lawyers presented several other tweets and articles that demonstrate his respect for the judiciary.
