Foreign committee spokesperson of the dissolved Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) Abdel Mawgood Al-Dardiry reportedly denied the legitimacy of the claims made by the committee to freeze Muslim Brotherhood assets on Sunday.
During a press conference held at State Information Service headquarters on Sunday, the judicial committee to freeze Brotherhood assets reported that they had found secret documents that were purportedly found in the Brotherhood guidance bureau.
“The committee is not specialised and we do not acknowledge its results. We highly question the veracity of what was announced, two years from the burning of the guidance bureau,” said the spokesperson of the Brotherhood’s political arm.
According to Al-Dardiry, the committee aimed to distort the image of the Brotherhood ahead of the anniversary of the 25 January Revolution, on which the Brotherhood called on people to protest.
He further highlighted that the committee has not substantiated any of the corruption charges levelled against Brotherhood members.
In the press conference, the committee mentioned that the Brotherhood planned to remove several judges from their posts by issuing a new decision that sets the age of retirement for judges at 60, instead of 70.
The committee’s chairman, Ezzat Khamis also alleged that the Brotherhood planned to issue a bill that would have allowed the appointment of the prosecutor general by the president.
The committee previously confiscated funds belonging to 1,345 Brotherhood members. It also froze the management of 103 Islamic schools and transferred their management to the Ministry of Education.
In response, the Brotherhood criticised the committee’s actions and described it as “a junta-affiliated committee, appointed by military coup commanders”, in an official statement published on their website earlier in January.
The committee’s report further stated that the Brotherhood planned to restructure the state security apparatus to create an Islamic security body, in addition to a plan that aimed to expel Lieutenant General Sami Anan, Field Marshal Mohamed Tantawi, and other leaders of the presidential guard’s office.
“The documents found in the Brotherhood’s guidance bureau included ones that aimed at dissolving the Supreme Constitutional Court (SCC) and decreasing its members down to only 11, in addition to utilising the new constitutional articles in inciting strife between SCC members,” Khamis said.
Thousands of Brotherhood members held a sit-in in January 2013 at the Supreme Constitutional Court (SCC), the highest judicial entity in the country, in a bid to stall its work by preventing judges from entering.
The sit-in came in response to the SCC’s previous ruling that dissolved the Shura Council, despite a constitutional declaration issued by Morsi at the time, which sought to make the council immune to any judicial verdicts.
Meanwhile, as Egypt embarks on the fifth anniversary of the 25 January Revolution that toppled Mubarak’s regime, the country has failed to convict any of the former regime figures and secure the restitution of embezzled funds transferred abroad. These include CFH 590m in Swiss banks, fro a total of 14 Mubarak regime figures, according to recent statements from the Swiss prosecutor general.
