CAIRO, 14 November 2004 — The daughter of the late Egyptian President Anwar Sadat has filed a lawsuit against one of her father’s closest aides on charges of “injuring the memory of the deceased,” her lawyer confirmed yesterday.
Samir Sabry, lawyer for Ruqyiah Muhammad Anwar Sadat, said the suit was filed against Hussein Shafei who served as Sadat’s vice president in the early 1970s.
“My client is asking for Shafei to be imprisoned for a year in accordance with Egyptian law,” Sabry said. “She is also asking that he pay $15 million in damages.”
The lawyer said another suit had been filed against Hamad bin Thamer Al-Thani, the managing director of the Qatar-based Al-Jazeera television that broadest a series of interviews with Shafei about his book.
The row broke out last week when Shafei published his memoirs, claming that the late Anwar Sadat, who was assassinated by Islamists in 1981, had been an agent of the US Central Intelligence Agency for years.
The book “Hussein Shafei: Witness To The Age of Revolution” has sold thousands of copies in Egypt, and received publicity thanks to a series of appearances by Shafei on Arabic satellite channels.
A separate claim for damages has been filed against the publishers of the book in Cairo.
Shafei claims that Sadat emerged as President of Egypt thanks to a complicated conspiracy worked out by the United States to impose “what amounted to a colonial rule” in Cairo.
Shafei cites no sources for his claim. He also ignores the fact that Sadat had been vice president of Egypt under President Gamal Abdel-Nasser who has also been accused of having worked for the CIA in the 1950s. After Nasser’s death, Sadat was unanimously chosen by the Egyptian National Assembly (Parliament) and the ruling Arab Socialist Party as the sole candidate in a presidential plebiscite that he won with 99.9 percent of the votes. Immediately after his election, Sadat appointed Shafei vice president.
Sadat chose Shafei, a former army officer, at a time that Nasser’s heirs were engaged in a bitter power struggle centered on the future course of Egyptian foreign policy.
A group, led by Zakaria Muhaeydin and Ali Sabry, wanted Egypt to remain in the Soviet orbit in the hope that Moscow’s support would enable the Arabs to destroy Israel. Another group, led by Sadat envisaged a change of course to turn Egypt into an ally of the United States, and seek the return of Egyptian territory, seized by Israel in 1967, through a mixture of diplomacy and war.
Shafei supported Sadat who managed to purge the leftists within the regime and open a dialogue with the United States with the help of the Shah of Iran. In 1973 Sadat led Egypt into its only military victory in over 2,000 years by pushing the Israelis away from the Suez Canal for a while. Egypt’s mini-victory opened the way for a diplomatic effort, led by Henry Kissinger, then US Secretary of State, to persuade Israel to withdraw from the Sinai.
Shafei claims that the entire episode of the Ramadan War in 1973, known to the Israelis as the Yom Kippur War, had been stage-managed by Kissinger to give Egypt a false victory in exchange for which Cairo would later recognize Israel and abandon the Palestinian cause.
The Sadat family lawyer has built his suit on the basis of a law that makes insulting the president of the republic a crime punishable by a minimum of one-year imprisonment. But it is not clear whether the law also covers former presidents. In the case of Sadat, the “insult” in question consists of Shafei’s claim that the late president had been an agent and a spy for the Americans.
Shafei does not mention the fact that he played a role in establishing the secret dialogue between Cairo and Washington soon after Nasser’s death.
In the spring of 1971 Iran’s Foreign Minister Ardeshir Zahedi, a son-in-law of the Shah, visited Cairo to restore full diplomatic relations between the two countries after nearly a decade. Shafei was assigned as Zahedi’s host and was present during part of the talks the Iranian visitor held with Sadat.
It was during Zahedi’s stay in Cairo that Sadat ordered the arrest of the entire pro-Soviet leadership of the Nasserite regime, raising speculation that the Iranian had brought the “green light” needed for the move.
In October of the same year it was Shafei’s turn to visit Iran, where he met the Shah in Persepolis, to relay a message from Sadat that Egypt wished to sue for peace with Israel with help from the United States.
Many of Shafei’s claims could be checked easily. Over 90 percent of secret US documents related to relations with Egypt have now been declassified under a law that puts such information into the public domain after a period of 30 years. A further 20 percent of the documents have a 50-year confidentiality ban while the last 10 percent must remain secret for 75 years.
