A parliamentary panel agreed Sunday to a request by Minister of Justice Mamdouh Marei to lift the immunity of an independent lawmaker in order to be questioned over bribery accusations. "Nineteen MPs who are members of thee Legislative Committee accepted to lift the immunity of Talaat el-Sadat to be probed, while six others rejected the request, which was finally endorsed," MP Moustafa Bakri, an independent member of the committee, said. He added that el-Sadat would be probed by the Prosecutor-General over accusations by a businessman, who said he had paid him to help get a licence for a tour company. El-Sadat, a nephew of late Egyptian President Anwar el-Sadat, denied he had got the money. "I'm a lawyer. I had some other business with him, for which he paid me," el-Sadat had previously said. El-Sadat was imprisoned for one year by a military tribunal in 2008 for saying that not a single bullet was fired by former president Sadat's bodyguards during his assassination in 1981 to protect him. However, his membership in the Parliament was not revoked.
