Member of April 6 Youth Movement Ali Zayyat was arrested without knowledge that his mother was the one who reported him for his political views.

It was only when he was transferred to Nozha police station that Zayyat’s friends, who thought he had been reported by his neighbor, found his mother shouting at lawyers who had come to his defense.

“His mother reported him, screaming “either me or April 6 at home,” and prevented us from defending him. She insisted on filing a report for his imprisonment,” a lawyer from the Hisham Mubarak Law Center, Mokhtar Mounir, said.

Friend Ayman Montasser said that he urged Zayyat’s mother to drop the complaint against her son for an hour, before she agreed to on condition that he never show up at home again.

“But, the police officer already received a phone call ordering him to refer Zayyat to Nozha prosecution. His mother replied, “that’s better!” Montasser explained.

Zayyat’s mother disagrees with her son’s political views, particularly his opposition to Commander-in-Chief Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, the army, police and the current draft constitution.

Police confiscated Zayyat’s laptop, camera, mobile, a sticker denouncing the Protest Law, a gas mask, and a Vendetta mask.

“This is what we have been driven to — a mother reporting her son to the police because our media told her that April 6 are traitors and work against the country and that they belong to the Brotherhood. I was very shocked when she was talking,” Montasser recounted.

Last year witnessed a similar incident in the northern governorate of Sharqiya, when a mother reported her daughter for insulting Islam, amid a huge wave of accusations of religious defamation under the reign of deposed Islamist President Mohamed Morsi.

The mother said that her daughter, an 18-year-old pharmacy student, was in a relationship with an atheist young man, and that both of them had insulted the Islamic religion.

The daughter, in return, filed another complaint against her mother, accusing her of attempting to poison her. The case was referred to prosecution, but no further details were revealed.