Al-Ahram Weekly Issue No. 254 4 - 10 January 1996
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875

Parliament votes for immunity

By Gamal Essam El-Din

The outgoing parliament while voting for the new one

At its first sitting on Saturday, the new People's Assembly debated, and then rejected, a request by Justice Minister Farouk Seif El-Nasr to strip five of its members of the parliamentary immunity so that they could be investigated - four for alleged financial irregularities and the fifth for suspected murder. But the Assembly, acting on the recommendation of its constitutional and legislative committee, allowed the five deputies to testify before prosecution officials. Parliamentary rules require that the Assembly's permission be sought before MPs can answer prosecution questions.

Referring to the four accused of financial malpractice, committee chairman Mohamed Moussa said that investigating the misuse of public funds usually takes a long time, up to three or four years. "A deputy could not be left without immunity for such a long time. But if the prosecution decides to put them on trial, we can lift their immunity in a minute. We are not using immunity to protect anyone," he insisted.

The four who are suspected of misappropriating public funds are Tawfiq Abdou Ismail, Khaled Hamed Mahmoud, Mahmoud Azzam and Ibrahim Aglan. The fifth, who is a suspect in the investigation of the murder of two men during the recent parliamentary elections, is Ahmed Fouad Abaza.

The case of the four came to public attention in August, when the Administrative Control Authority submitted a report to the prosecutor general claiming that a group of businessmen, including Mahmoud Azzam, a private contractor, Khaled Mohamed Mahmoud, the son of a former minister of local administration, Yassin Abdel-Fattah Aglan, a Beheira governorate businessman, and Mohamed Kamel Mustafa Elba, a public contractor, used forged documents to obtain large loans from the Commercial Bank of Daqahliya and Al-Nil Bank without collateral.

Azzam's wife, Aleya El-Ayyouti, is vice-president of Al-Nil Bank. According to the report, Azzam took advantage of his wife's position to obtain loans amounting to LE179 million without notifying the bank's board of directors or listing the loans in the bank's books.

The report alleged that Tawfiq Abdou Ismail, chairman of the outgoing Assembly's plan and budget committee (also re-elected for this session) and chairman of the Commercial Bank of Daqahliya, and Ibrahim Aglan, a member of the bank's board, provided Yassin Aglan, Ibrahim's brother, with more than LE200 million in loans, also without collateral and against the payment of hefty commissions.

The prosecutor sent the Administrative Control Authority's report to the outgoing Assembly and also requested the Central Bank of Egypt to investigate the actions of the two banks. The outgoing Assembly reacted by lifting the immunity of Azzam, Mahmoud and Ismail, who were deputies at the time. In the recent parliamentary elections, these three, plus Ibrahim Aglan, managed to win seats in the new Assembly. After taking the constitutional oath, they asked for the Assembly's permission tot testify before prosecution officials.

But on 17 December, the minister of justice, acting on a request by the prosecutor general, sent a report to the new Assembly requesting that the four deputies be stripped of their immunity. With surprising speed, Assembly Speaker Ahmed Fathi Sorour referred the minister's report to the Assembly's legislative and constitutional committee on the same day. And it was put on the agenda of the Assembly's first sitting last Saturday, 30 December.
Zakaria Azmi, MP for Cairo's Al-Zeitoun district and chief of the presidential staff, triggered a heated debate when he criticised the legislative and constitutional committee's report and said it did not provide convincing reasons for its refusal to lift the four deputies' immunity. He predicted that their immunity would have to be lifted eventually. Committee chairman Moussa retorted that one of the four, Ismail, had travelled abroad more than once during the past three months without any objection from the prosecutor.

Khaled Mahmoud, another of the four, objected to the fact that Azmi "seemed so sure that our immunity will be lifted in the end, although the prosecutor-general has stated more than once that the report did not amount to a direct accusation against us. Unless", Mahmoud added, "Azmi knows something which we don't know". Azmi denied being in the possession of secret information.
Sameh Ashour, a Nasserist deputy, triggered another heated debate when he accused the committee, of which he is a member, of devoting greater attention to the four deputies' request to testify before prosecution officials than to the request for the removal of their immunity. "This could make it easy for certain people to cover up their activities", Ashour said. Angered by these words, Tawfiq Abdou Ismail responded that neither he nor the three others "needed the protection of parliamentary immunity because we have full confidence in the justice system". He added that "the people demonstrated their support for us in the recent elections."

Pointing out that the four had requested the Assembly's permission to testify before prosecution officials, Ismail charged that certain authorities - an illusion to the Administrative Control Authority - had acted against Egypt's interest by defaming the good names of honourable people.

The Assembly, after authorising the four to testify before prosecution officials, then debated another report by its legislative and constitutional committee on the case of Ahmed Fouad Abaza, MP for the Sharqiya district of Abu Hammad. The committee also turned down the justice minister's request to strip him of his parliamentary immunity on the grounds that the request was not backed by documents on the case filed against Abaza, as required by the Assembly's regulations. The committee authorised Abaza to testify before prosecution officials.

Yassin Serageddin, leader of the Wafd Party's parliamentary group, backed the committee's report, but Abdel -Ahad Gamaleddin, chairman of the Assembly's proposals and complaints committee, objected to it. He said that the constitution intended parliamentary immunity as a protection for MPs in the discharge of their parliamentary duties. Abaza, however, "was caught red-handed and a police order was issued remanding him in custody for 15 days".

According to the prosecutor's report, Abaza was caught on 7 December inside his car, with an automatic rifle and 24 bullets, inciting his supporters to interfere in the vote-counting process. Earlier, the report said, Abaza was suspected of shooting and killing two people, Ahmed Mohamed Youssef and Ahmed Mohamed Ahmed, in a polling station. He was also said to have fired bullets at a number of ballot boxes in an attempt to have the votes inside invalidated.

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