Cairo: An Egyptian court has added former football star Mohammad Abu Trika to the authorities’ terror list, his lawyer said on Tuesday, based on suspicions he financed the banned Muslim Brotherhood.
In 2015 a government committee froze the assets of the former player for Cairo-based club Al Ahly and Egypt’s national team, two years after he retired.
The government accuses him of financing the Muslim Brotherhood, which was classified as a terrorist organisation at the end of 2013.
According to an anti-terror law imposed in 2015 by President Abdul Fattah Al Sissi, anyone on the country’s terror list is subject to a travel ban, with their passport and assets liable to be frozen.
Abu Trika, one of the most successful African footballers of his generation, had publicly endorsed the presidential bid of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohammad Mursi in 2012.
Mursi went on to become Egypt’s first democratically elected president, only for the army to oust him one year later and ban the Brotherhood.
Abu Trika’s lawyer Mohammad Osman said that the court’s decision was “contrary to the law” saying the retired player “has not been convicted or formally notified of any of the charges against him.”
“We will appeal this decision,” he said, adding that “if he is added to the list there will be many legal consequences, notably the travel ban.”
The freeze on Abu Trika assets is still in force, despite two court orders that it be lifted, Osman added.
In an interview with state-run Al Ahram newspaper in May 2015, Abu Trika denied that his company — or any of his partners — had ever funded the Islamist movement.
Since Mursi’s overthrow, a police crackdown against the Brotherhood has left hundreds dead and thousands jailed.
Abu Trika retired in 2013, and the 37-year-old has since avoided expressing his political views publicly.
