Salafi preacher sentenced to 7 years for forging mother’s nationality

Prominent Salafi preacher and founder of the Raya Party, Hazem Salah Abu Ismail, was sentenced Wednesday to seven years imprisonment by Cairo Criminal Court on charges of fraud in the case of his mother’s nationality.

Abu Ismail was disqualified from the presidential race in 2012 when official documentation suggested that his mother carried US citizenship alongside her Egyptian nationality, contrary to information provided in Abu Ismail’s official candidacy forms.

Lawyer turned politician, Abu Ismail has often been described as charismatic and populist. Prior to his disqualification by the High Elections Commission — a body whose decisions are immune from judicial review — Abu Ismail was considered a frontrunner in the presidential race.

According to the Constitution, presidential candidates and both their parents must hold Egyptian nationality only in order to qualify.

In the first round of the presidential elections following the ouster of Hosni Mubarak, Muslim Brotherhood candidate Khairat al-Shater was also disqualified from the race and replaced by Mohamed Morsi.

After Morsi’s ouster last year, Abu Ismail was arrested alongside thousands of others associated with the Islamist project.

In July 2013, Abu Ismail was detained pending investigation and his assets were frozen.

The court had previously sentenced Abu Ismail to one-year imprisonment on two different occasions — once in January last year and a second time this month — for contempt of the court and insulting the judiciary during proceedings, privately owned Al-Masry Al-Youm reported. 

The newly passed Constitution maintains the stipulation regarding the nationality of presidential candidates. Article 141 states that a “candidate must be an Egyptian citizen born to Egyptian parents, who has not held any other citizenship, and whose spouse and parents have not held any other citizenship.” Additionally, candidates “must enjoy their civil and political rights, have fulfilled military service or been legally exempted from it and, at the time of nomination, must be at least 40 years of age.”

A nomination to the presidency, according to the Constitution, must be backed by at least 20 elected members from the House of Representatives, or endorsements from at least 25,000 citizens from across 15 governorates who are eligible to vote, with a minimum of 1,000 endorsements from each governorate.

Field Marshal Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s campaign has announced that it has collected at least 50,000 endorsements, though it will only submit the required 25,000.