Egyptian lawyer accuses Azhar Imam's first-ever female advisor of links with Muslim Brotherhood

Controversial Egyptian lawyer Samir Sabry filed this week an urgent complaint before the prosecution general and the state security prosecution against the Azhar Grand Imam's first-ever female advisor, Nala El-Saeedi, accusing her of being affiliated to the Muslim Brotherhood, designated a legal group since 2014, local news outlets reported.

Sabry called for referring Saeedi, an advisor to Sheikh Ahmed El-Tayeb for expatriate affairs, to a criminal trial and add her to the travel ban list over allegedly supporting the banned Muslim Brotherhood and the Rabaa sit-in, the reports added.

The sit-in was held by the Muslim Brotherhood members and their sympathisers in 2013 in support of the first democratically-elected president Mohamed Morsi, who was removed from power by then-defence minister Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi. The open sit-in was forcefully dispersed on 14 August, leaving hundreds killed and injured in what was dubbed by local and international rights groups as the "Rabaa Massacre."

In his complaint, Sabry claimed that by looking into Saeedi's records, "it turned out that she was not suitable for the sensitive position she was holding due to her full support for the destructive ideologies of the Muslim Brotherhood, a terrorist organisation that seeks to spread poison in the ancient institution of Azhar."

Sabry's source of information remains unclear.

On her part, Saeedi released a statement run by local media in which she denied any affiliation to a group or a political party, pledging allegiance to the regime of President Sisi.

Saeedi was the head of the Development Centre of International Students at Azhar institution before holding her current advisory position.

Established over 1,000 years ago in the Egyptian capital Cairo, Azhar is the highest Sunni Islamic institution in the Middle East.