Tagammu candidate Diaa Rashwan is kidnapped by gun-weilding thugs, rescued by police
Tagammu candidate Diaa Rashwan, running in the Upper Egyptian constituency of Armant, was kidnapped and held by thugs wielding automatic weapons, as he and his supporters tried to stop wide-scale rigging of the ballot in favor of his NDP opponent Bahgat Al-Sonn. Rashwan, a noted scholar and the deputy director of Al-Ahram's Center for Political and Strategic Studies, told Ahram Online in a phone interview upon his release, that police sent an armored car to the school where he was being held and rescued him from captivity.
Throughout the day's voting, Rashwan and his supporters were trying to stop ballot stuffing by supporters of the NDP candidate, who had forcibly evicted his monitors from balloting stations, and employed thugs to prevent his supporters from voting. Rashwan said he had contacted Tagammu leader Rifaat El-Said to brief him on the situation in the constituency.
Rashwan hails from an influential family in this Upper Egyptian district, and his late father had represented the district as its MP for some three decades, though for the ruling NDP.
https://english.ahram.org.eg/News/1275.aspx