Mother defends daughter accused of exploiting street children

The family of an Egyptian-American woman arrested in Cairo for running an association that allegedly recruits children, abuses them and pays them to protest against the regime, has vehemently denied all charges leveled against her.

Aya Hegazy, who founded the Belady Foundation, has been in detention since Friday, alongside her husband who runs the organization with her, and two other individuals working there.

They have been accused of holding street children against their will, as per a complaint submitted to the police station. The National Security Agency accused them of using the children in Muslim Brotherhood marches, paying them to throw stones and hitting them to take part in the April 24 protests near the Ettehadiya Palace, held to demand the release of imprisoned members of the April 6 Youth Movement.

Naglaa Hosni, Hegazy's mother, wrote a letter to Mada Masr stating that her daughter and her husband have been in the process of legalizing the status of the organization and were already authorized to open a bank account under the association's name.

The organization, launched in September 2013, held campaigns on sanitation, combating sexual harassment and rehabilitation for street children, according to their Facebook page, which also has pictures of the children’s activities.

“The kids are being taught how to read and write, paint, learn self defense. Aya and her husband sleep on the floor in the conference room so that they can supervise the kids 24/7,” Hosni said. “They treated the children with dignity and respect.”

On Sunday, the privately owned Al-Dostour newspaper circulated the news, citing a complaint about the street children organization submitted by Khaled Gouda, a trader who was looking for his lost son 15 days ago. When he met his missing son's 13-year-old friend, he told him that they have both been going to an association for street children called Belady near Tahrir Square.

Gouda, according to Al-Dostour, went to the association with his wife, and as he tried to locate his son, he was allegedly attacked by people working in the association. As they were leaving, one of the children reportedly told Gouda that he was beaten by workers in the association and was detained there.

However, Hosni explained that when her daughter and her husband were outside the organization on Thursday, thugs came and stormed it, looking for their missing relative, a 15-year-old who was seeking refuge in the organization because his father was reportedly electrocuting him. When Hegazy and her husband called the police, a low-ranking policeman came late and said there was nothing he could do, and asked to be compensated for the taxi fare of his trip to the association from the police station. Gouda and his wife later stormed the organization on the same day looking for their son and reportedly hit a boy on the head with a cooking pot.

According to Hosni, who briefly saw her daughter on Saturday, Hegazy was interrogated by National Security and was hit on the neck in the process. “It made her fall to her knees. The officer called her names and said he would urinate in her vagina and that she should be sentenced to death, or at least to a life sentence,” Hosni said. She added that another officer asked her to confess that she has been receiving foreign funds and that she has been deceived, in order to prompt her release.

The Interior Ministry released a statement regarding the arrests, claiming the children taken by police from the organization testified that they had been paid by the defendants to participate in protests.

Hosni said that only four out of the 21 children arrested in the raid testified against the four defendants, and were coerced to do so.

Street children have been often brought into the center of clashes between police and protesters throughout the last three years, with the Ministry of Interior claiming that protests are staged by paid thugs and homeless children to destabilize the country.

“The phenomenon has spread since the Cabinet clashes [in 2011, between protesters and the military], where street children were made to confess that activists paid them to take part in the protests. It all started with the regime using street children,” said Maha Maamoun, a member of the Popular Campaign for Child Protection.