Egypt recently lost the lawyer, politician, and some-time political prisoner Talaat al-Sadat, who was the nephew of Egypt’s former president Anwar al-Sadat.
WATANI International
25 November 2011
Egypt recently lost the lawyer, politician, and some-time political prisoner Talaat al-Sadat, who was the nephew of Egypt’s former president Anwar al-Sadat.
Sadat was born in 1946 in the village of Tala in Menoufiya in the Nile Delta. He earned a law degree in 1985, and advanced in his career to become a lawyer with the Court of Cassation. He was also a legal consultant for several local and international companies.
Defender of difficult cases
As a lawyer, Sadat gained a reputation for not shying away from ‘difficult’ cases. Among the famous cases he undertook was to defend the 27-year-old Mohamed Abdel-Latif, a poor man who had been accused of brutally slaughtering 10 persons in a village in Beni Mazar in Minya, Upper Egypt in December 2005. The crime rocked Egypt, and was inexplicable since the 10 persons were killed at the same time in different houses in a row, for no fathomable reason. Unsubstantiated rumours were circulated that the killings had to do with the curse of the Pharoahs, and were linked to the theft and smuggling of Pharaonic antiquities, or the desecration of ancient Egyptian sites. The police, under pressure from the public to find the murderer, caught Abdel-Latif and prosecuted him, but Sadat, who volunteered to defend him, succeeded in securing a non-guilty verdict for him. To date, however, the crime remains shrouded in mystery and no culprit was caught.
Abrasive opponent
Sadat was famous for his aggressive, bristly opposition of the pre-25-January-Revolution regime.
In 2006, marking the 25th anniversary of his uncle’s death, Sadat accused unnamed generals in the Egyptian military of masterminding the assassination plot. He was arrested on 4 October 2006 and, on 31 October, sentenced Sadat to one year in prison for defaming the Egyptian armed forces. At the time, his arrest and conviction were criticised by Egyptian human rights groups and the United States State Department.
A staunch critic of the former regime, Sadat aggressive attitude toward some businessmen who were close to Gamal Mubarak, who before outset Mubarak was prepared to be inherit president.
A verbal clash with the tycoon MP Ahmed Ezz in Parliament in 2010 ended with Sadat taking his shoe off and threatening his opponent. He had publicly questioned Ezz on the means by which someone as young as him could amass fortunes estimated at EGP40 billion.
Sadat remained insistent that more of his shoes would be raised at all the politicians he saw as “corrupt”.
In 2006, Sadat was the first MP to propose a bill to take a president to court. His proposal included 22 reasons for trial, among them treason, breaching or disabling provisions of the Constitution, intentional violation of laws or regulations that result in loss of the State’s financial rights, interfering with the judiciary, and manipulating or rigging elections or referenda.
Egypt at heart
Following the 25 January Revolution, Sadat was elected as the new chairman of the now defunct National Democratic Party once the former president Hosni Mubarak resigned from the post. In April, however, the NDP was dissolved by a court order and its assets handed over to the government. Sadat decided to form a new party, and was in the process of establishing the Egypt National Party shortly before his death on 20 November.
Shortly before his death Sadat had attacked the Muslim Brotherhood and likened them to the NDP, saying, “They have prepared themselves to rule the country. But we will never allow them to do so, since they would turn Egypt into another Afghanistan.”
Egypt, Sadat insisted, today needs someone like Gamal Abdel-Nasser, who would opt for discipline not for revenge. A man, he said, who would raise the values of citizenship, regain Egypt’s plundered money, and confront any attempt to undermine Egypt.