President of Zamalek Sports Club and infamous Egyptian lawyer Mortada Mansour turned himself in to authorities for the execution of a one-month prison sentence on Saturday, 25 February, over a defamation case against Al-Ahly Sports Club President, Mahmoud Al-Khatib.
Mansour initially arrived in court to appeal the sentence, but his appeal was rejected by the court and he has since been in custody.
ترحيل مرتضى منصور من محكمة النقض عقب تأييد حكم حبسه لمدة شهر pic.twitter.com/GngDrCdA8y
— Ahmed Abd Elbaset (@ahmed7baset) February 25, 2023
For “defaming Al-Khatib and tarnishing his family’s reputation,” Mansour was initially sentenced to a year in prison. In July 2022, an appeals court accepted Mansour’s appeal against the sentence, suspending his term and fining him EGP 10,000 (USD 330). The following month, a Cairo Economic Misdemeanors court commuted another 1-year sentence in a similar case to one month.
He filed a conflict of jurisdiction lawsuit against these verdicts, arguing that two courts issued verdicts on the same case, but it was rejected in today’s session.
Mortada Mansour is an notorious public figure with a long-standing reputation for inflammatory comments towards a variety of individuals and entities, from rivals like Al-Khateeb all the way to players and managers of his own club.
In a post on his official Facebook account, Mansour wrote: “At last, a President of Al-Ahly gets a President of Zamalek locked up. For the first time in history.”
In the post, he claimed that his imprisonment is part of a scheme to oust him from his presidency. “You see, people of Egypt and supporters of Zamalek: I had to disappear completely from the political, sports, and media scene at any price.”
Despite his confident statement that “lions fear neither death nor prison,” his tenure as Zamalek’s President is in jeopardy by the fulfillment of this sentence, as sports club regulations in Egypt consider that jail or prison time disqualifies a person from holding any office in sports clubs.
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