The Egyptian authorities have released Safwan Thabet and his son Saif, according to what the daughter of the businessman accused of “belonging to the Muslim Brotherhood” revealed, Maryam Safwan Thabet.
Thabet was arrested in December 2020, and he is the founder of Juhayna, one of the largest dairy and juice companies in Egypt.
So We responded to him and delivered him from the distress.
God answered prayers…
Abu Safwan Thabet
And my brother Saif Al-Din ThabetWith me …
We swear to you, O Lord, that you will release her from all grievances soon…
– Mariam Safwan Thabet (@mariamthabet) January 21, 2023
The Egyptian Public Prosecution had charged Safwan Thabet with “joining the Brotherhood, supplying it with funds to achieve its purposes by changing the regime by force, attacking the armed forces and police, their installations and public facilities, harming the country’s national economy, joining a terrorist group and financing its activities with millions of pounds.”
The National Security Sector in the Egyptian Ministry of Interior had announced that it had managed to “thwart a scheme aimed at reviving the activity of the Brotherhood by working to find sources of financing for its terrorist activities.”
The Ministry of the Interior said in its statement at the time that the information indicated that “the Brotherhood, Yahya Mahran Othman Kamal al-Din, played a prominent role in the scheme as one of the main arms of the imprisoned Brotherhood leader, Safwan Thabet.”
The ministry stated that Safwan Thabet, the head of the Juhayna company, “assigned Yahya Mahran to exploit his companies in transferring and concealing the organization’s funds and investing their revenues for the benefit of its terrorist activities in order to circumvent the reservation measures taken against the economic entities of the organization.”
Last year, Amnesty International accused the Egyptian authorities of abusing “anti-terrorism laws to arbitrarily detain Thabet and his son, in conditions amounting to torture, in retaliation for their refusal to hand over the assets of their company,” according to a statement by the organization.
The organization quoted “a source familiar with the business of Juhayna that a senior Egyptian official had asked Safwan Thabet, shortly before his arrest, to transfer part of his company to a government-owned entity.”
Human rights organizations estimate the number of political detainees in Egypt to be about 60,000, since Sisi took office in 2014 after the army overthrew the late President, Mohamed Morsi, and the authorities launched a massive crackdown on Islamists, liberals, and human rights activists.