The psychiatrist who confirmed the presence of blogger Maikel Nabil in the Abbasseya Mental Hospital said she was notified Monday that she has been summoned for questioning by Health Minister Amr Helmy.
Basma Abdel Aziz, the director of the media department at Egypt’s General Secretariat of Mental Health (GSMH), said the notification did not specify where, when or by whom she would be questioned. She will be sending a response to the ministry requesting these details, as well as the charges she is facing so she that can prepare her defense, she said.
Abdel Aziz had said in an earlier statement that “a referral order to the Abbasseya Mental Hospital was issued recently for activist Maikel Nabil, on trial because of allegedly insulting the military institution last March.”
The media department at the 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,” she noted.
Abdel Aziz refuses to be questioned by the Healthy Ministry's legal affairs department, saying it “lacks impartiality.” She will demand to be investigated instead by the administrative prosecution.
Abdel Aziz said she is appalled that she will be questioned over her statement, considering the Health Ministry has failed to apologize for spokesman Mohamed al-Sherbiny’s false statements claiming Nabil was not at the hospital.
Earlier on Monday, Sherbiny denied reports that Nabil was at the mental hospital, saying that the ministry would investigate a statement from the GSMH claiming that Nabil was there.
Translated from the Arabic Edition
