The Saudi Embassy in Egypt has granted the Egyptian parliament 1,800 Hajj visas this year for distribution among members of parliament by 3 visas per MP.
This came days after the Parliament ratified the transference of Tiran and Sanafir islands’ sovereignty to Saudi Arabia despite Egypt’s High Administrative Court had issued a final judicial verdict confirming that the two strategic Red Sea islands belonged to Egypt.
This number of visas is three times the visas granted to the Egyptian House of Representatives last year.
The Parliament Secretariat has notified the members of parliament, via text messages, that they should provide as soon as possible the names of the visas beneficiaries among their relatives and acquaintances in the course of the current week.
The Saudi embassy in Cairo distributes the so-called “courtesy visas” to the Egyptian institutions, including the presidency, the parliament, the cabinet, the foreign ministry, sovereign bodies (intelligence), government-owned and private newspapers, as well as senior writers, journalists and diplomats.
The Egyptian parliament had approved the border demarcation agreement between Egypt and Saudi Arabia on June 14, and referred it to Egypt’s coup leader Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who ratified it on the 24th of the same month, despite some 124 MPs announced their rejection of the agreement amid escalating popular outrage.
