Egypt’s presidential campaign has kicked into full gear, and naturally the top opposition candidate was just arrested.A retired top general named Sami Anan, seen as the last remaining real threat to Egyptian President Abdel Fatah el-Sisi, was dragged out of his car in the street by armed men at about 11:00 a.m. Tuesday morning, Mahmoud Refaat, a spokesman for Anan’s campaign, told VICE News. Anan’s arrest comes just days after he announced plans to challenge el-Sisi for the presidency in a vote scheduled for March.“There is no legal basis to arrest him,” Refaat said, calling the move politically motivated.The cops didn’t just throw Anan in jail. They went after dozens of his campaign staff, too, and even members of their families, Refaat said.“Yesterday 30 members of the campaign staff were arrested,” Refaat said, along with “some of their family members.” Those taken into custody are being held in an “unknown place,” he said. Anan himself was taken to the Military Prosecutor’s office in Cairo, Reuters reported, citing his son and one of his lawyers.Throwing people in jail is a big part of what el-Sisi, himself an army general, has been up to ever since he seized power in a military coup in 2013. Immediately after taking charge, el-Sisi suspended the constitution and tossed the country’s first-ever democratically-elected president, Mohammed Morsi, into jail.Since then, Egyptian authorities have arrested or charged at least 60,000 people, according to Human Rights Watch, and “forcibly disappeared hundreds for months at a time, handed down preliminary death sentences to hundreds more, tried thousands of civilians in military courts, and created at least 19 new prisons or jails to hold this influx.”Under el-Sisi, “Egyptian police and National Security agents have routinely used torture and enforced disappearances against both criminal suspects and perceived political opponents with near impunity,” the rights group says. Many of those arrests have been justified in the name of a wide-ranging war on terrorism, which rights groups say Sisi has used to also silence critics of the government.On Friday, the 69-year-old Anan announced his bid for the presidency in a video posted to his Facebook page, saying he was running to save Egypt from the “wrong policies.”Not long after, the Egyptian supreme military council for armed forces, known as Scaf, a group in which Anan himself formerly served as Deputy Chairman, issued a statement accusing Anan of election violations, and saying he would be “summoned for interrogation in front of specialized personnel.”Other potential candidates have already, seemingly, been shaken out of the race, including a former Prime Minister named Ahmed Shafik, who exited amid media speculation that he was being held in a Cairo hotel by the authorities; and a rights lawyer named Khaled Ali, who was disqualified over an ongoing legal case against him.Mohamad Anwar Sadat, nephew of assassinated Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, pulled out of the race earlier this month, citing the climate of intimidation and fear surrounding the vote.“People who volunteered to collect votes of confidence were scared away,” Sadat was quoted as saying. “I‘m scared for the young men and women and don’t want to expose them to this, because we won’t be able to do anything for them.”
Cover image: Egypt's Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces Sami Anan during a meeting in Cairo, Egypt March 29, 2011. (REUTERS/Khaled Desouki/Pool)
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