Former Minister of State for Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Mohamed Mahsoub wrote that Italian police detained him on Tuesday night, in preparation for handing him over to the Egyptian authorities.
“The Italian police have been holding me for three hours near the city of Catania at the request of the Egyptian authorities to extradite me…and refuse to disclose the charges brought against me,” a post from his Twitter account reads.
Although no official Italian or Egyptian body has announced Mahsoub’s detention, he was sentenced to three years in prison last December for publically insulting the Egyptian judicial authority.
In 2013, Mahsoub was the Minister of State for Legal and Parliamentary Affaris under former Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi.
Following the toppling of Morsi that year, Egyptian authorities placed Mahsoub on a list of “terrorist entities”.
That September, the Cairo Criminal Court ordered the confiscation of his wealth, alongside 25 Muslim Brotherhood leaders who faced charges of sabotage, killing and violence.
Then on December 30 2017, the Cairo Criminal Court sentenced Mahsoub in absentia to three years in prison over charges of insulting the Egyptian judicial authority in TV and radio interviews.
24 other politicians and activists were handed the same ruling, including Morsi, political activist Alaa Abdel-Fattah, lawyer Montaser al-Zayat and journalist Abdel Halim Qandil.
Edited translation from Al-Masry Al-Youm
