Egyptian authorities released the country’s former anti-corruption chief on Tuesday after serving a five-year prison sentence for allegedly insulting and spreading false news about the army, his lawyers said.
Hesham Genena, a former judge, left a police station and returned to his home in the New Cairo district of eastern Cairo, lawyer Hossam Lotfy said.
His daughter, Shorouk Genena, posted pictures on Facebook showing her father hugging his family. “Baba is out, finally,” she wrote.
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Genena was taken to the country’s Supreme State Security Prosecutor’s Office on Tuesday following his release from a prison, where he was questioned on separate allegations of spreading false news, another lawyer, Naser Amin, said.
The allegations are related to comments he made in 2016 about the scale of government corruption, Amin said. Prosecutors ordered his release pending an investigation, he added.
Former Egyptian anti-corruption official Hesham Genena has been released. (FoxNews)
Genena, who was arrested in February 2018, served a five-year sentence for insulting the military. The conviction was linked to inflammatory comments in which she claimed that former military chief of staff Sami Annan was in possession of documents incriminating the country’s leadership. He said that the documents were kept abroad.
Annan was arrested shortly after announcing his intention to challenge President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi in the 2018 election. The president won with 97% of the vote in a contest that saw no real challenger.
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Annan was sentenced to nine years in prison on charges of fraudulent voter registration, breach of regulations and incitement to the armed forces for a video he released declaring his candidacy. He was released in December 2019 for health reasons, Amin said at the time.
Genena headed Egypt’s main watchdog agency until el-Sissi fired him in 2016 following an investigation that concluded he had misled the public about the scale of government corruption. Genena said that corruption had cost the country billions of dollars in 2015 alone. He later said that he was misquoted by a local news outlet.
Genena had long been the subject of criticism from pro-government media, well-connected businessmen and senior officials since he was appointed in 2012, but his massive allegations of corruption sparked a particular furor, with the media branding him a traitor and hidden supporter. of outlawed Muslims. Fraternity.
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El-Sissi appointed a commission that ultimately accused Genena of misleading the public with the support of anonymous “foreign” parties.
