Contractor and Actor Exposing Sisi’s Corruption Ignites Electronic War in Egypt

The controversy over the videos posted on Facebook by the Egyptian actor and contractor Mohamed Ali, who worked for 15 years with the army, turned into an electronic war between regime opponents and supporters of General Abdel Fattah El Sisi, manifested through various hashtags that went viral and appeared on the list of the most trending hashtags in Egypt.

Mohamed Ali

With a sequence of videos posted by Mohamed Ali and reposted many times by social media activists, a number of hashtags launched by both regime opponents and supporters emerged, including #Mohammed_Ali, #MohammedAli_Liar, #IntisarRuling, #Intisar_Intelligence; but the most prominent among them were: #MohamedAli_Exposed_Them, #WithYou_Sisi respectively Which is still clearly prominent.

In the flaring war between the two sides, Sisi supportrs succeeded in hacking the personal Facebook page of Mohamed Ali, where he began posting his videos, and wrote a post that tries to link him with some Turks, to appear in the form of being supported by Turkey, usually accused by Pro-Sisi media of supporting the regime opponents.

Translation of the fake post: “I thank my beloved Turkish friend Akram and my Turkish friends, owners of the Universal Restaurant in Barcelona, who are supporting me in my ordeal.”

But Ali appeared in two more video clips asserting that his Facebook page was hacked and controlled, and no longer under his management. In one of the two video clips, he mocked the idea of linking him with the Turks and announced a new page created for him by friends, called: Secrets of Mohamed Ali, through which he would be able to post his new clips.

The latest post on Ali’s new page was part of one of his video clips showing what he says are cases of financial corruption of Sisi and his regime. Ali’s company was building five villas and a palace in the Hickstep area, each with a tunnel that reaches a concrete wall building, where Sisi and his army commanders would hide if the people revolted against them.       

The number of videos uploaded by the contractor, Mohamed Ali, reached six, accusing Sisi and army commanders of wasting public money by spending on projects targeting personal interests and purposes, without any economic feasibility studies, including a hotel costing about LE 2 billion and a presidential palace costing nearly LE 300 million.

Kenneth Roth comments

Kenneth Roth, the executive director of the Human Rights Watch, on 6 September commented in a tweet on a report published by the Middle East Observer about Facebook’s blocking of a video posted by Mohamed Ali, an Egyptian businessman and actor, accusing Egypt’s Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi, his wife, Intisar, and prominent army commanders, including current Minister of transportation Kamel al-Wazir, of corruption and slandering public funds.

Followers reply to Roth’s tweet

In reaction to Kenneth Roth’s tweet, there were many replies, including: