{"id":12598,"date":"2018-08-24T08:24:13","date_gmt":"2018-08-24T08:24:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=12598"},"modified":"2018-08-24T08:24:13","modified_gmt":"2018-08-24T08:24:13","slug":"egypt-former-diplomat-arrested-after-call-for-referendum-on-sisi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=12598","title":{"rendered":"Egypt: Former diplomat arrested after call for referendum on Sisi"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Egyptian authorities arrested a former diplomat and two others in Cairo in the face of planned protests in Tahrir Square calling for a referendum on President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s rule.<\/p>\n

The arrest of Maasoum Marzouk on Thursday came after he also proposed the release of all political prisoners, the formation of a transitional government council, and a 10-year ban on political candidacy for anyone who served in government or parliament over the past 10 years.<\/p>\n

Marzouk declared in an August 5 statement that if his initiative was not accepted, he would hold a “popular conference” in Tahrir Square on August 31 to “discuss next steps”. Tahrir was the epicentre of the 2011 mass uprising that led to downfall of\u00a0former President Hosni Mubarak<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Marzouk, who served in the Egyptian army’s special forces, is a veteran of the 1973 war against Israel. He is also a\u00a0former Egyptian ambassador to Uganda, Finland and Estonia, and was assistant minister of foreign affairs under Mubarak.<\/p>\n

He recently helped found The People’s Democratic Party and served as an adviser and spokesman for the presidential campaign of Hamdeen Sabbahi, a leftist candidate who ran against Sisi in the 2014 elections. \u00a0<\/p>\n

Following his statement, a complaint was filed against Marzouk with charges including “insulting the state” and “promoting chaos”.<\/span><\/p>\n

Khaled Ali, Marzouk’s lawyer, said police officers besieged his Cairo home and took him to an unknown location.<\/p>\n

He also confirmed the arrest of economist Raed Salama and geology professor Yahia Kazzaz on Thursday. The charges against them remain unclear.<\/p>\n

Sisi<\/a>\u00a0won a second four-year term in April after securing 97 percent of the vote in the presidential election.<\/p>\n

The election was criticised as a one-man show with no credible opposition. At least six other candidates were either jailed, prosecuted, or\u00a0<\/span>pulled out of the race.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Egyptian authorities arrested a former diplomat and two others in Cairo in the face of planned protests in Tahrir Square calling for a referendum on President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s rule. The arrest of Maasoum Marzouk on Thursday came after he also proposed the release of all political prisoners, the formation of a transitional government council,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":12599,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12598","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12598","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12598"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12598\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12599"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12598"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12598"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12598"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}