The son of Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, who is imprisoned in the US, said his father has not been released as part of a deal to allow Americans charged in the foreign-funded NGOs case to leave Egypt.
Abdallah Omar Abdel Rahman, whose father has been imprisoned in the US for almost 19 years, told CNN that a senior official from the Foreign Ministry told him his father’s release was not part of a swap deal.
Egyptian authorities had accused 43 NGO workers, including 16 Americans, of receiving funds from overseas without the approval of the Egyptian government and of carrying out activities not linked to the nature of their work.
The crisis led to tension between Egypt and the US and put the annual US aid to Egypt at stake.
Abdallah Abdel Rahman, who has been staging a 9-month sit-in in front of the US Embassy, said his father’s lawyer, Ramsey Clark, former US attorney general, told them the sheikh is still in prison and nothing indicates that he will be released.
He added that the Americans charged in the case should have been swapped with Abdel Rahman and others in American prisons.
"But Essam al-Erian, the head of Parliament’s Foreign Relations Committee, and Saad al-Katatny, the speaker of Parliament, are ignoring the issue," he said.
Abdel Rahman, known in America as "the Blind Sheikh," has been serving a life sentence in the US following investigations into the 1993 World Trade Center bombings. He was previously imprisoned in Egypt for allegedly issuing a fatwa that led to the assassination of former President Anwar Sadat in 1981.
Translated from Al-Masry Al-Youm
