Police arrested two monitors overseeing the voting process on Tuesday, before releasing them after a short time, said a rights group involved in monitoring Egypt’s parliamentary elections.
Members of the Heliopolis Police Station arrested and beat the two men and charged them with attempting to photograph an election committee, said Ahmed Fawzy, the head of the Egyptian Association for Community Participation Enhancement.
Fawzy said that the charges are illegitimate and that the Interior Ministry committed an electoral violation when it beat and arrested monitors. "The Interior Ministry was not happy that the first day of the elections passed without any problems," said Fawzy.
Fawzy went on to say that the two monitors, Yasser Zakaria and Hamza Abdel Muti, were arrested as they videotaped a brawl outside the Masr al-Qawmiya School polling station in Heliopolis.
Abdel Moez Ibrahim, president of the high elections committee, previously charged the Interior Ministry with committing a number of electoral violations.
On Monday, Fawzy criticized the lack of security provided by the Interior Ministry outside some polling stations.
On Tuesday, the independent daily Al-Shorouk newspaper quoted the Interior Ministry apologizing for mistakes that marred the voting process.
