Egypt detains rights lawyer and former presidential candidate ‘Khaled Ali’

The Dokki Prosecution has decided on Tuesday to detain rights lawyer and previous presidential candidate Khaled Ali, after he had been interrogated on charges of making an obscene finger gesture in public in front of the State Council.

The Egyptian rights lawyer, who recently spearheaded a case challenging the government’s Tiran and Sanafir deal with Saudi Arabia, is also accused of founding a political party without permits.

No formal changes have been made against Ali.

Ali will be detained for 24 hours pending investigations.

According to the interrogations, Ali committed an indecent act following the ruling that annulled Red Sea Islands Tiran and Sanafir agreement that would have ceded the islands to Saudi Arbia.

The decision of the prosecution will be released on Wednesday.

“Bread and Freedom”party that is currently being founded by Ali is set to hold a conference in solidarity with the rights lawyer. Several members of the party have been detained over the past few days as well.

It is worth to mention that Ali has recently announced that he is planning on running for Egypt’s presidential elections that are set to be held in 2018.

The rights lawyer had previously nominated himself in the presidential elections that were held in 2012. However, he couldn’t make it to the runoff.

Ali openly defied Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi and filed a case against Al-Sisi and the government, accusing them of selling Tiran and Sanafir without a legal base, further saying that they violated the constitution.

The incident allegedly took place in January outside a Nile-side Cairo courtroom as Ali, carried on the shoulders of supporters, celebrated victory in a case he and other lawyers brought against al-Sisi’s government.

That day the ruling upheld a verdict by a lower court that repealed an agreement under which the Egyptian government was to hand over to Saudi Arabia two islands at the mouth of the Red Sea’s Gulf of Aqaba.

The Egyptian government claims that the strategic islands of Tiran and Sanafir belong to the Saudis who placed them in Egyptian custody in the 1950s because they feared Israel would capture them.

The controversial agreement sparked the largest anti-government demonstrations since al-Sisi took office in June 2014 after he led a military coup against Egypt’s first democratically elected President Mohamed Morsi in 2013.