CAIRO: A military court adjourned Wednesday the case of detained blogger Maikel Nabil to Dec. 14.
Nabil was arrested from his home in March for writing a blog post titled "The Army and the People Are Not One Hand," where he warned against the army’s conspiracy against the revolution.
He was charged by the military prosecution with insulting the military and spreading false information and sentenced to three years in prison. However, he was granted a retrial after going on hunger strike against being tried in a military court.
His father, Nabil Sanad, sent an official apology to the head of the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi, urging him to release his son or transfer him to a hospital where he can be properly treated due to his deteriorating health condition.
Mark, Maikel’s brother, said Wednesday that Maikel’s refusal to apologize to SCAF is the reason why the military court keeps adjourning his case for over two months since his retrial began.
Maikel, along with his lawyers, refuse the interrogation and any level of cooperation with the military court, which led the military court to appoint another lawyer for Maikel, who requested his transfer to a mental hospital for a psychological examination.
"The final hospital report confirmed that my son’s mental state is fine and that he is responsible for his actions," Sanad, had told Daily News Egypt in a previous interview.
"The military court appointed earlier a lawyer that we do not know, who requested Maikel’s referral to a mental hospital. We did not hire this lawyer to defend my son," Sanad said.
Head of the 0Media Unit of the General Secretariat of Mental Health Dr. Basma Abdel-Aziz issued a statement earlier slamming the decision to send Nabil to a mental hospital, describing it as "moral assassination" to intellectuals and freedom fighters.
"Referring political activists to mental hospitals to evaluate their mental state is unacceptable and brings us back to the dark ages when political opponents were thrown in mental hospitals to isolate them from their societies and undermine their thoughts and ideas," Abdel-Aziz said in the statement.
However, former minister of Health Amr Helmy said that the statement does not represent the official stance of the ministry after referring Abdel-Aziz to a disciplinary committee because of the statement.
