Immigration & ResidencyPolitics
◆1 source
ASML employee Omar Elshal, 34, was due to appear before a judge in Egypt on 26 October. After consulting his lawyer, the Dutch embassy decided not to attend the Eindhoven resident’s case, Minister Tom Berendsen wrote to the House of Representatives.
2 sources
The trial of Omar Elshal, a 34-year-old ASML employee from Eindhoven who has been detained in Egypt for more than a year, was postponed again. He is due to appear before a court in Cairo on 9 January. His friend and spokesperson Marouen Hamdi said Elshal attended the hearing but received no clarification of the allegations against him. Hamdi said Elshal’s lawyer has not been allowed to visit him in prison or speak with him substantively at the hearing, and that family members were barred from attending. Elshal requested contact with representatives of the Dutch embassy, but that contact is still absent, according to Hamdi. Family, friends and colleagues are calling for greater political and diplomatic pressure from the Netherlands.