Morsi advisor arrested in Libya, former governor jailed
The whereabouts of a former advisor of ousted Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi are still unknown, hours after the authorities at Tobruk airport in eastern Libya said they arrested him while the Libyan government said it did not have any information about the matter.
An official from the visa section at the Tobruk airport told Anadolu Agency that Mohamed Ahmed Shehata was arrested as he tried to travel to Turkey with a forged visa.
"Airport authorities handed him over to the Libyan government through the Interior Ministry," the source said.
He quoted Shehata as saying during an interrogation that he had entered Libya illegally by paying $400 to a person he did not identify.
The source, however, did not mention the exact date of Shehata's arrest. Even with this, he said Shehata was arrested in the past ten days.
New MEE newsletter: Jerusalem Dispatch
Sign up to get the latest insights and analysis on Israel-Palestine, alongside Turkey Unpacked and other MEE newsletters
Meanwhile, the media office of the Libyan Interior Ministry denied reports about Shehata having been handed to the ministry.
Spokesman for the Libyan government Ahmed Lamin, meanwhile, said the government did not know anything about Shehata’s arrest.
"The government has not got any official information about the man," Lamin told AA. "We only knew about his arrest from the media," he added.
Egyptian authorities have not made any official comment about Shehata's arrest yet.
Former Morsi governer jailed
At the same time, a court in the northern Egyptian province of Damietta on Thursday sentenced a Muslim Brotherhood leader, who served as a governor under ousted president Mohamed Morsi, to 30 months in jail after convicting him of inciting violence.
The ruling, however, can be appealed, according to judicial sources.
Ahmed al-Bayali, a Muslim Brotherhood leader and the former governor of Gharbiya under Morsi, was charged with inciting riots and belonging to the Brotherhood, which was designated a "terrorist" group by the Egyptian government in late December last year.
Twenty-two other Muslim Brotherhood members were tried in the same case and received the same sentence.
Al-Bayali was arrested in late August outside a petrol station in Giza, west of Cairo, in the company of ex-prime minister Hesham Qandil.
Egyptian authorities have unleashed a massive crackdown on the Brotherhood since the bloody dispersal last year of two protest camps staged by Morsi supporters in which hundreds of demonstrators were killed by security forces.
Since then, Egypt's military-backed authorities have rounded up hundreds of the Brotherhood's senior and mid-ranking members, hundreds of whom remain in detention.
Middle East Eye delivers independent and unrivalled coverage and analysis of the Middle East, North Africa and beyond. To learn more about republishing this content and the associated fees, please fill out this form. More about MEE can be found here.
