Sabbahi denies pledge to try Egypt's Sisi

Potential presidential candidate Hamdeen Sabbahi on Saturday denied reports about his pledge to try former army chief Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi if he is elected president.

"I don't treat Field Marshal al-Sisi as a criminal who should be tried," Sabbahi told a press conference at the Cairo headquarters of the Popular Current Party.

He went on to say that my main cause "is to achieve social justice".

News portal Youm7 earlier reported that Sabbahi had pledged to bring Sisi to court if he won Egypt's presidential election late May.

Sabbahi's campaign, however, came out immediately to deny the allegations, saying that the leftist politician did not make any comments about Sisi's trial.

The news portal, however, reaffirmed that Sabbahi had made the comments about the trial of Sisi, the man who led the army to unseat elected president Mohamed Morsi in July following mass protests against his presidency.

But Sabbahi insisted that the news portal had misquoted him during his meeting with supporters.

"I have not joined this battle [presidential election] to target al-Sisi or any other person," he said. "My main goal is to fight despotism and corruption."

Sisi's campaign has not officially commented on the recording.

Sisi and Sabbahi, a main opponent of Morsi during his single year in power, are the only candidates in Egypt's presidential election, which are scheduled for 26-27 May.

Electoral campaigning is due to kick off on 3 May, but this is almost the first time one of the two candidates vows to bring the other to court.

The presidential elections are part of a three-step transitional roadmap adopted by the army upon Morsi's ouster on 3 July.

Since Morsi's overthrow, hundreds of people were killed in confrontations between supporters of the ousted president and security forces, which climaxed on 14 August when the authorities forcibly evicted thousands of Morsi's supporters camping out in two squares in Cairo and Giza.

Hundreds of people were killed in the eviction of the two sit-ins, which has turned into a symbol of the deadly nature of Egypt's political conflicts ever since.