• EGYPT
  • April 1, 2014
  • 3 minutes read

Morsi Aide Young Daughter Arrested on False Charges

Morsi Aide Young Daughter Arrested on False Charges

 On March 29, Karima El-Serafy was violently arrested from her family’s house in Cairo. Karima is the daughter of Amin El-Serafy, secretary to President Morsi’s office director who was accused by the Minister of Interior with his daughter yesterday of leaking national security documents to a foreign country. Masked members of the police and the army cut the phone lines, broke into Karima’s apartment and detained the 20-year old university student. They took Karima to an unknown location. The family also reported missing items from the house after those security forces left.



Amin El- Serafy was one of the presidential aides who were forcibly detained since the military coup in July 3, 2013 until December 2013 in the communications building at the Republican Guards Club in Cairo. He was held with four other aides including Essam El-Haddad, foreign relations assistant; Ayman Ali, expatriate affairs assistant; Khaled Al-Qazzaz, foreign relations secretary; and Abdel-Maguid Mashaly, media adviser. They have filed two complaints to the general prosecution accusing Al-Sisi of kidnapping and forcibly detaining them during that period.


El-Serafy was transferred from the Republican Guards Club to Al-Aqrab maximum security prison on December 17, 2013 along with Khaled Al-Qazzaz and Abdel-Maguid Mashaly. That was the same day the minister claimed he was arrested.


On December 2, 2013, the interior minister’s spokesperson told Daily News Egypt that El-Serafy is being held in Tora prison.


He was replying to a Human Rights Watch report that demanded the disclosure of the whereabouts of the presidential team. The same spokesperson appeared yesterday with the minister in his press conference, although his story contradicted the minister’s claims and they both were lying.


The charges against El-Serafy and his daughter are entirely without merit. How could El-Serafy smuggle the claimed documents from the presidency if he has been arbitrarily detained since the coup? Did he manage to run from prison, break into presidential palaces, and take the documents – which are kept in steel safes according to the minister, deliver them to some other people, then return to prison without being noticed? And how did he instruct his daughter Karima to smuggle the documents when  she never had the chance to visit him in prison?