Name: Yehia Hussein Abdel Hady

Born in 1954

Education: Graduated from the Egyptian Military Technical College (MTC) in 1977

Profession:

• Officer Engineer at the Egyptian Armed Forced until 1992
• A founding member and head of the Leadership Development Center, and an Undersecretary of the Ministry of Investment in 2004.

Activity: Founder of the Civil Democratic Movement

How he started his political activity: Yehia Hussein Abdel Hady had served in several positions and posts, which qualifies him to be a member of the “Omar Effendi Valuation” committee that was comprised of 15 members of business leaders and experts. This committee was a watershed in Yehia’s life. At first, he wasn’t opposing the practice of privatization, he says: “I wasn’t taking an opposition stance against privatization in principle, especially when it comes to internal trade companies such as ‘Omar Effendi'”. But this stance has changed when the committee, which he took part in, estimated the selling price of the company at EGP 1300 million (approximately USD 232 million) after reducing the value by 20 to 30% in order to facilitate the deal. Abdel Hady was surprised at the rejection of such an estimation in favor of adopting another at EGP 450 million, later raised up to EGP 550 million, moreover,  the committee signed appears to be an apology for its original report while holding onto the lower value. “The whole thing was a farce. Who am I supposed to report the squandering of more than 700 million pounds of the Egyptian people’s money to if the senior officials themselves are the ones who are wasting public money?”, he claimed. The company was later sold to the Saudi-based Anwal Group, and till this moment the issue is still generating a lot of controversy given its numerous violations.

Yehia Hussein Abdel Hady filed a complaint to the Public Prosecutor against the then-Investment Minister Mahmoud Mohieldin and the Chairman of the holding company Hady Fahmy, accusing them of pressuring the Valuation Committee to facilitate the seizure of public money for the benefit of Saudi trading company “Anwal”; as the real value of the deal should have been  EGP 1.3 billion, which means that an amount of 600 million Egyptian pounds of public money have been wasted. The case of Omar Effendi was the only case that had come to light following Abdel Hady’s complaint. Despite the fact that he initially gave his approval for the ministry’s committee’s valuation, he later expressed his regret, decided to reverse it and announced he would fight against the privatization deal regardless of the pressure he, and the other members of the Valuation Committee, will face. Although he managed to disrupt the deal for 8 months, it was eventually struck and its beneficiaries got what they wanted by selling Omar Effendi to the Saudi investor, and although Abdel Hady’s resistance to the deal had not been successful, he paid its price when he was dismissed from all his posts and returned to the Leadership Development Center as a subordinate employee, not as the director, and all his mission assignments had been canceled.

Abdel Hady had fought many battles to counter the sale of several state-owned assets, including the sale of Banque du Caire and the sale of state lands to Hisham Talaat Moustafa at a cheap price.

The head of the Holding Company (Sherif) filed a libel lawsuit against Abdel Hady, and on 5 May 2009, the court ordered him to pay a fine of EGP 40,000 as a compensation, which was later, in June 2009, mitigated to EGP 10,000 after appealing the decision.  On 10 June 2009, the Civil Democratic Movement issued a statement in solidarity with Abdel Hady as being one of Egypt’s honorable citizens.

His detention:

Engineer Yehia Hussein Abdel Hady was arrested on 29 January 2019, just hours after the Civil Democratic Movement called for the release of five of its members, who were arrested following their participation in an event commemorating the eighth anniversary of the January 25 Revolution. According to some members of the Egyptian opposition movement, security forces arrested Abdel Hady from his home at dawn.

Charges:

The State Security Prosecution leveled against the defendants in “Allahoma Thawra” (O God a revolution please) case charges of; joining a banned group established contrary to the provisions of the law, preventing state institutions from carrying out their duties, preparing for and planning to carry out acts of violence during the months of January and February, and using the January 25 Revolution anniversary to carry out acts of sabotage and spread chaos in the country.

His current situation:

According to Abdel Hady’s lawyer, the Prosecution exhibited 4 “pen drive memory disks” with his client, containing medical reports on his health and the surgical operations he underwent, adding that he requested the Prosecution to print parts of these reports to officially submit them as a proof of his critical health condition and his need for treatment.