An Egyptian independent Member of Parliament (MP) submitted his resignation from a panel at the People's Assembly (the Lower House of Parliament) late on Monday in protest against his parliamentary immunity being lifted without him being given a chance to defend himself against bribery allegations. "They [MPs from the Parliamentary Legal Committee] denied me the right to reply to these untrue allegations," MP Talaat el-Sadat said in a press conference. He added that the committee should have listened to his defence before lifting the immunity. "I do not reject the immunity being lifted. However, they should have heard me or even the businessman who filed the report against me," said el-Sadat, the nephew of late Egyptian President Anwar el-Sadat. The Legal Committee, from which he resigned, had lifted el-Sadat's immunity on Sunday, at the request of Minster of Justice Mamdouh Marei after a businessman accused the MP of taking a bribe to help him get a tour company licence. "The businessman himself said he was subjected to pressure to file the report against me. He wanted to testify in the People's Assembly, but he was rejected," el-Sadat said. The lawmaker was imprisoned for one year by a military tribunal in 2008 for saying that former President Sadat's bodyguards did not fire a single bullet to protect him, when he was assassinated in 1981. However, Talaat el-Sadat's membership of Parliament was not then revoked.