Esraa Abdel Fatah denied recent claims by the media that she is under investigation by the prosecutor general for espionage. In a Wednesday interview with the Daily News Egypt, the prominent activist and Al-Dostour Party member dismissed the claims as “rumours”.
According to Abdel Fatah, a complaint was filed by Abdel Aziz-Fahmy, General Manager of Youth and Sports in Gharbiya governorate, but this complaint was baseless. Fahmy claimed that Abdel Fatah, along with fellow activist and 6 April Youth Movement founder Asmaa Mahfouz, received EGP1.6bn from foreign sources “which entered Egypt for political and human rights activists.”
Abdel Fatah reached out to the prosecutor’s office to investigate this claim herself, she said.
“There is no investigation,” said Abdel Fatah. “When I talked to the people that are responsible [in the prosecutor’s office] they said there is no evidence at all with the complaint.”
The prosecutor’s office will not follow up on the complaint because of a lack of evidence, said Abdel Fatah, adding that she has no connection at all to the claimant.
“I don’t know why he did this,” said Abdel Fatah. “People said he is from the regime of Mubarak, and he is getting revenge against the people who made the real revolution on the 25th of January… He has found that what happened on 30 June is a chance to come to the scene again, so he made these reports.”
Abdel Fatah said she has not been interrogated and is not under a travel ban. She also said that Mahfouz is out of the country in Kuwait.
Abdel Fatah and Mahfouz were co-founders of 6 April in 2008 when they used social media to support a workers’ strike at the Misr Spinning and Weaving Company in the Delta city El-Mahalla El-Kubra. Fatah is currently a social media editor at the newspaper Al-Youm Al-Sabaa.
