Dirty tricks: El-Sisi’s political opponents targeted

CAIRO: As Egypt’s presidential elections, due to to start at the end of March, get closer, potential opponents to incumbent President Abdel-Fatteh el-Sisi are falling by the wayside, with the latest incident involving an attack on a leading member of the opposition campaign, outside his home.

Reuters reported on Sunday that Hisham Genena, a former anti-corruption watchdog chief – who had been working to elect former military chief-of-staff, Lieutenant-General Sami Anan who is currently under arrest at a military prison – was attacked outside his home on Saturday in what his lawyer described as a failed kidnap attempt.

Anan was arrested by the military as he drove to his office last week after being accused of running for office without military permission.

As Genena left his home outside the capital, Cairo, he was stopped by a group of men in two cars who attacked him with knives and sticks.

The attackers were subsequently questioned by police shortly after the incident and Genena was taken to hospital for treatment of a bleeding eye and several fractures. Pictures circulated on social media showed the campaigner with a badly battered eye and a blood-soaked bandage wrapped around his knee.

The interior ministry could not be immediately reached for comment. However, Egypt has a history of thugs being hired and paid by the authorities to attack political opponents, according to media reports.

Under former president and military man Hosni Mubarak, whose draconian rule helped spark the 2011 uprising in Egypt, protesters were attacked in the streets by men bused in to the capital in police vehicles, while opposition voters were sometimes attacked by knife-wielding men at polling stations, as witnessed by the African News Agency (ANA).

Video has also circulated on social media showing the abuse of prisoners in Egyptian police stations, as well as the battered remains of those who died under interrogation, while human rights organisations have long accused the Egyptian authorities of human rights abuses.

In 2016, Egypt’s chief auditor was sacked by Sisi after he claimed that government corruption had cost the country billions of dollars.

Sisi came to power on the back of a military coup in 2013 which overthrew the country’s first-ever democratically elected president, Mohamed Mursi – the leader of the banned Muslim Brotherhood.

Mursi is being held in prison on a number of charges, including some related to alleged espionage and conspiring with foreign groups.

A death sentence on charges relating to a mass jailbreak was overturned in November 2016.

Sisi’s second term in office is believed to be a foregone conclusion after several other potential presidential contenders pulled out of the race.