A doctor at Egypt’s General Secretariat of Mental Health (GSMH) has confirmed that activist and blogger Maikel Nabil was referred to the Abbasseya Mental Hospital.
Dr. Basma Abdel Aziz, director of the media department at the GSMH told Al-Masry Al-Youm on Monday that Nabil arrived at Abbasseya Mental Hospital on Sunday.
She added that Dr. Hossam Hassan, the head of the committee responsible for patients’ rights, has stayed with Nabil since his arrival to the hospital.
Earlier on Monday, Mohamed al-Sherbiny, the spokesman for the Health Ministry, denied reports that Nabil was at the hospital, saying that the ministry would investigate a statement from the GSMH claiming that Nabil was there.
In the earlier statement, Abdel Aziz, said that “a referral order to Abbasseya Mental Hospital was issued recently for activist Maikel Nabil Sanad, on trial because of allegedly insulting the military institution last March.”
Abdel Aziz added that the media department at GSMH “condemns all attempts to abuse mental hospitals for purposes other than the ones they were designed for, and reiterates that the previous regime used to accuse mentally healthy individuals of being mentally disturbed and accuse them of crimes of conscience despite professional reports stating their sanity.”
