Thaindian News

London, Sep 21 (ANI): The daughter of the former Egyptian president Anwar Sadat is going to court to defend her late father against allegations that he murdered his predecessor Gamal Abdel Nasser, the founding father of the modern Egyptian republic.

Former Egyptian president Sadat has been accused by his former aide of poisoning the coffee of his predecessor Nasser, who died three days after consuming the drink.

Sadat, most famous for his controversial peace deal with Israel at Camp David, took over the presidency after Nasser’s unexpected death in 1970 from a heart attack that some doctors attributed to poisoning, The Guardian reports.

A veteran Egyptian journalist and former Sadat aide, Mohamed Hassanein Heikal, used his show on al-Jazeera television to give an account of Nasser’s final days, which included several hints that Nasser’s death might not have been natural.

Heikal recalled an incident at a Cairo hotel where Nasser was meeting the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. According to Heikal, the two leaders had a heated argument, after which Nasser looked so nervous that Sadat, who was vice-president at the time, offered to get him a cup of coffee, the paper reports.

Heikal alleges that Sadat ordered the president’s private cook out of the kitchen and made the coffee himself, which Nasser drank. Three days later Nasser collapsed and died.

“What Heikal said has inflicted tremendous damage on me and my family and hurt our feelings deeply,” wrote Ruqaya Sadat in her submission to the courts.

The family has argued that Heikal’s account cannot be true because Sadat was incapable of making a cup of coffee on his own, The Guardian reports. (ANI)