Egyptian military judges dropped convictions against Muslim Brotherhood presidential candidate Khairat el-Shater, clearing the nominee of the nation’s dominant political party to run in the election, the group’s lawyer said.
“We have taken administrative, legal and judicial measures before the military judiciary and based on this, all convictions have been dropped,” Abdel Monem Abdel Maqsoud said in a phone interview in Cairo yesterday. “All legal obstacles have been removed, and el-Shater now has the right to fully exercise all his political rights,” he said.
The Brotherhood said March 31 that el-Shater was its candidate for the presidential election that begins May 23 and May 24, making him one of the favorites to win and potentially increasing tensions between the once-banned group and the generals who currently rule the nation. He received 58 out of 110 votes at a meeting of the Brotherhood’s consultative council, according to Arab satellite network Al-Jazeera. The narrow majority suggested rifts within the organization.
Abdel Maqsoud said the needed legal steps were taken “over the last days.” El-Shater, 62, will submit his candidacy application this week, Abdel Maqsoud said. “The Brotherhood wouldn’t have named him if there were still obstacles.”
El-Shater spent years in and out of the jails of former President Hosni Mubarak. In the most recent conviction, he was sentenced in 2008 by a military court to seven years in prison amid a crackdown on the Brotherhood by the then government. He was released in March 2011, less than a month after Mubarak’s ouster, though the sentence wasn’t overturned then.
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