The Administrative Court has set a date in the next session to consider the first hearing of the lawsuit demanding the the cancellation of the licenses of the Uber and Careem companies in Egypt, due to their violation of the issued licenses following an alarming increase in incidents of attempted kidnapping.
The lawsuit states that the companies violated the rules and regulations for granting operating permits to vehicle drivers stipulated in Article Eight of the Law on Regulating Land Transport Services Using Information Technology, issued under #87 of 2018 and its executive regulations demanding that smart transportation companies be obligated to adopt electronic surveillance systems inside cars and link them to the internal system of the companies and the Ministry of Interior, to monitor the behavior of drivers from the beginning of the trip until the end.
Driver claims innocence
Accompanied by a security force from Nasr City Second Police Station, the accused driver in the most recent incident arrived on Wednesday at the Forensic Medicine Authority to conduct the analysis, in implementation of the Public Prosecution’s decision.
The driver, identified as ‘Hussein M.’, presented evidence of his innocence to the public prosecution, stating: “I installed surveillance cameras inside the car because I was afraid of it being stolen, as I work on it, and every morning I take people to the Fifth Settlement area and at the end of the day I open the (Uber) application.”
The accused denied his attempt to attack the victim, Nabila Awad, with a knife to force her to take off her clothes, as she said in the police report, claiming that the cameras in the car prove his innocence.
He said that the truth was they had simply disputed over the value of the fare between them, after he took his car from the Fifth Settlement of Sheikh Zayed City as he refused to pay according to the “Visa” system.
A spree of incidents
Security services in Cairo on May 13 arrested an Uber driver for harassing and injuring a woman in the Fifth Settlement area during a ride.
The security services examined a post on Instagram by the sister of the victim, saying that the woman had been harassed and threatened with a knife.
The woman’s sister, Sally Awad, wrote on Instagram that her 40-year-old sister was harassed by an Uber driver during a ride on Saturday from the Fifth Settlement area to Sheikh Zayed area.
This incident follows after the tragic death of Habiba Shamaa, who passed away on March 14 after falling into a coma that lasted for 21 days, which resulted from her jumping out of an Uber car when the driver had attempted to kidnap her.
The driver admitted on March 27 that the victim was riding his car at the time of the incident, and as soon as he closed the car’s windows and sprayed an aromatic substance inside it, she jumped out of the car while he was driving at a speed of 100 km/hour and that he fled to avoid suspicion.
He further confessed to being under the influence of drugs.
