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Egyptian Islamist party prepares 4-axis map to escape dissolution

Friday 30-06-2017 - 05:45 PM

Mohammed Attia

Tarek El-Zomor

Cairo – The Building and Development Party leaders have prepared a four-axis map to avoid the dissolution of their party by the Supreme Administrative Court, particularly after Tarek El-Zomor was placed on the terror list prepared by four Arab countries, including Egypt.

In doing so, the party’s leaders accepted the resignation of El-Zomor from the party leadership and decided to prepare a complete report to refute claims on the party’s violation of the political parties’ law.

They also agreed with Coptic Christians to witness at the Supreme Administrative Court that their party did not pose a threat to Egypt’s unity.

Another report will be prepared on the efforts exerted by party and its initiatives to calm the situation in Egypt since the ouster of former Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in 2013.

Egypt's political parties affairs committee had filed a petition with the Supreme Administrative Court to dissolve the Building and Development Party, freeze its funds and uncover its financier.

The committee also referred a memo to the prosecutor general to investigate the party’s violation of Article no 4 of the political parties’ law over electing El-Zomor as the party’s chairman.

Article no 4 of the political parties’ law calls for not electing the party’s chairman on religious, ethnic, geographical or racial bases and that the party should not be a branch for any foreign party or organization.

El-Zomor was sentenced to 25 years in jail in 1981, but was only released in March 2011, following the toppling of Hosni Mubarak.

El-Zomor, 58, was re-elected head of the party in April for a four-year mandate, although he has been living in Qatar since the army’s 2013 overthrow of Morsi, following enormous street protests against the latter’s divisive rule.

El-Zomor, a staunch supporter of Morsi’s outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, is being charged in Egypt in several cases related to terrorism and incitement to violence.