The National Society for Human Rights has denied recent reports that Ahmed Al-Jizawee, the Egyptian lawyer accused of smuggling narcotics into the Kingdom, wrote a letter to the Egyptian media in which he denied admitting to smuggling the narcotics and said he was forced to write his recent request for a royal pardon. “He submitted the request to King Abdullah, Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, on his own free will, with his signature and in the presence of a representative of the consulate of his country. Regarding the question of whether he admits to the charges or not, this will take place before the judiciary and the basic rule ‘the accused is innocent until proven guilty in a court of law' will be applied,” said Hussein Al-Sharif, general supervisor of the NSHR branch in Makkah. The NSHR, he said, had followed Al-Jizawee's case from the beginning and was available to provide him legal counsel. “Out of the commission's belief in its role of protecting human rights and ensuring the availability of all the rights to an accused regardless of his color, nationality, language or religion, a representative from the NSHR has been following Al-Jizawee's case since the beginning by assigning lawyer Sulaiman Al-Hunaini to enter a plea for him if he wished to do so,” said Al-Sharif. “We have communicated our intentions to the Consulate General of Egypt from the beginning and Al-Jizawee expressed his desire to hire a lawyer in accordance with an official request signed by him personally and submitted to the Ministry of Justice. “However, the accused dismissed the NSHR's lawyer and hired another lawyer based on his wife's and the Egyptian consulate's wishes as stated in a letter in which he thanked the NSHR for its efforts,” he added. __
