The Ministry of Interior issued a statement Tuesday denying media reports suggesting that one of the suspects arrested for involvement in the assassination of the former prosecutor general is related to Armed Forces Chief of Staff Mahmoud Hegazy.
The statement stressed that the suspect, Ahmed Gamal Hegazy, is not a relative of the army leader in any way, after a number of media reports quoting the suspect’s mother calling on the chief of staff to save his “nephew”.
The Ministry of Interior announced on Sunday the arrest of 14 persons suspected of involvement in the assassination of Hisham Barakat. The arrests came amid a larger group of 48 arrested suspects, whom the ministry claimed were participants in a terrorist plot upon instructions from Muslim Brotherhood leaders in Turkey and with training from the Gaza-based Islamist group Hamas.
Among the arrested was Al-Azhar university student Ahmed Gamal, 20, who appeared in a video produced by the ministry confessing to belonging to the Brotherhood and its “cluster groups”, and taking part in monitoring the movements of security forces.
Sanaa Farag, the mother of the young suspect, denied the accusations against her son and pleaded to the army lieutenant general to help out, according to a report by the Arabic edition of the Huffington Post.
Sanaa said the chief of staff is a first cousin of her husband Gamal Mahmoud Hegazy. The army has not yet responded to these claims.
Hegazy, a former chief of the military intelligence agency and father-in-law of President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi’s son, was appointed as army chief of staff on 27 March 2014.
