Here is the 7th episode from my podcast in Arabic. It is the second part of my post/podcast’s episode about the late media tycoon Mohamed Al-Amin who died earlier in December while serving a three-years-sentence in prison on charges related to human trafficking.
Al-Amin who was Egypt’s biggest media tycoon a couple of years ago suffered from Cancer in a late stage from a couple of months ago and was transferred to a Private hospital to receive treatment. He passed away earlier this month. You can listen to this post in Arabic in the podcast below.
You can check the first part of the episode/post here to refresh your memory.
We stopped at the arrest of Mohamed Al-Amin in January and how the media went mad.
It is expected honestly considering who he was and the severity of the accusations he was facing.
On 11 January, news websites began to publish his alleged statements in front of the prosecution denying all the charges and claiming that the three girls he was accused of molesting in his orphanage were sent to him by the Ministry of Social Solidarity’s officials despite they were older than the rest of the girls.
On 5 February, Al-Amin was referred to the Criminal court by the Prosecutor General on charges of human trafficking over sexually abusing and threatening seven underage girls." Not only two".
The referral order was full of details like the prosecution depended upon the testimonies of 13 eyewitnesses including the confessions of the victims, the examination of the defendant’s mobile phone, the Forensic Authority’s reports, the National Council of Childhood and Motherhood and the physiological and social research department at the Ministry of Social Solidarity.
“The statement issued by the prosecutor general’s office on the case said that the investigation concluded that the defendant hosted the victims in an orphanage he owned – Upper Egypt's Safe Hands Home for Girls – for the purpose of sexual abuse” The news report by Ahram Online issued on the same day read
This prosecution explains why he was accused of human trafficking and not only sexual assault. Human trafficking in the Egyptian Panel code includes establishing organizations “in his case an orphanage” to commit punishable crimes…etc.
The prosecution also revealed that the mobile phone of Mohamed El-Amin included a number of photos of the victims, which also proved that he was at the orphanage during the days the girls reported.
On 13 February, Atfal Mafkoda released an alleged recording of El-Amin inviting an important official in the ministry to visit the orphanage and to have breakfast with him and the girls in an unofficial visit allegedly. It was not been authenticated but the popular FB page claimed that an unknown official “a woman” helped El-Amin to get a huge piece of land in Bani Soueif governorate and to get a license for his official. “Spoiler: She was not the minister but some believed otherwise”.
In mid-March, his trial started but with fewer media interest despite being a huge circus. Al-Amin had an A-class criminal defense lawyers in Egypt from the highest tier of devil’s advocate.
Aside from his lawyer Tarek Gamil Aziz who represented him for years against his fight with Mortada Mansour, Al-Amin hired famous criminal defense lawyer Ahmed Bahaa Abu-Shaka. Abu-Shaka did not accuse the girls or the victims in the case of being liars, he said that they were not virgins when they were transferred to the orphanage according to medical reports and that’s they mean they did not have sex from a short time.
Needless to say that losing virginity before does not mean that the girls were not subjected to sexual assault later.
Al-Amin's lawyer also accused the girls of having lesbian affairs. I think he was trying to character-assassinate them as witnesses and to show them immoral characters in front of the judge.
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| Mohamed Al-Amin in the court's cage "Sada El-Balad" |
It did not stop at there because a bombshell was revealed in the trial and that’s it all “the accusations against Al-Amin” was a plot made by an angry ex-wife who used to work in the social solidarity ministry as the Minister’s adviser. You bet it !!
According to Abu Shaka, that lady orchestrated that plot to run away with the LE12 million she embezzled from her husband then Mohamed Al-Amin.
Allegedly Al-Amin divorced her after finding out that she stole from him that huge sum of money he allocated to Ramadan charity food supplies. His lawyers also accused that official of breaking the law and combing two jobs, in the government and in the private sector as an adviser to Al-Amin charity for LE 500,000 per year !!
They also claimed that she was the one responsible to give his orphanage a license to operate. “Remember that recording Atfal Mafkoda reported”.
To date, there have been no investigations into those allegations nor official accusations from Al-Amin to his ex-wife. For instance, he did not report her to the prosecution.
That Lady X turned out to be Dr Randa Rizk, a professor at Cairo University’s Faculty of Mass Communication and former adviser to the Minister of Social Solidarity for Corporate Social Responsibility “CSR”. Some news websites reported her first name while others only mentioned her initials.
Now I mentioned her full name because I found out that she released a long official statement in Arabic refuting the allegations of Al-Amin lawyers. She stated that official documents from Al-Amin’s charity showed that she did not steal anything and that the value of those supplies was LE 7 million instead of 12 million. She denied that she could authorize or approve anything in the Ministry because her position was an advisory one.
Also as an adviser, she can have two jobs.
Rizk apologized already to continue in her position in January claiming that she was going to teach at some Arab University. As far as I know, the professor continued to work publicly in Egypt and She even has a very active Facebook page.
She also stated that after knowing the allegations Al-Amin was facing from sexually assaulting the young girls in his orphanage she asked for a divorce in October.
Anyhow on 23 May 2022, the Criminal Court sentenced Mohamed Al-Amin to three years in prison and fined him EGP 200,000 for sexually assaulting seven underage girls. It was a first-degree sentence. As soon as the court released its reasoning in June, his lawyers appealed against the sentence.
The cassation court set 28 January 2023 to see the appeal but we all know what happened. He passed away before the court would say its word about whether to uphold the sentence or order his retrial and thus giving him a second chance to clear his name.
On 26 December, the Ministry of Social Solidarity announced that it finalized the legalization of Amin’s charity “Al-Amin Future” and I have got no comment to say.
Now I got something to say after his death, we found all the news websites that cursed him at the beginning of the year acting as if there was nothing and the pious man just passed away. Media figures keep saying that he was a great patriot to the end of the talk adding that they do not believe “those allegations against him”
Regardless of the fact that those allegations are actually made by the Egyptian Prosecution based on investigations aka the State, I wonder if the exact media figures would say the same thing and defend Al-Amin if he was on the other fence, from the opposition for instance.
Some say that Al-Amin was like Jeffery Epstein, which is untrue. For me the case of Al-Amin and the allegations that he faced and will continue to face even though he is in his grave remind me of the infamous Jamie Savill affair.
This is what is the second and last part of my rant about Mohamed Al-Amin in Arabic.
Here is the RSS of the Podcast which I hope you follow if you speak Arabic.
Here is the podcast's URL on Spotify and Apple Podcast. It is also available on Stitcher, Google Podcasts and Anghami.
I want to thank all those amazing listeners who are kind enough to listen to my rants in Arabic and the amazing readers who are kind enough to read those very long posts in English.
Thanks for your time and happy holiday.
The podcast is amazing
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