Amidst the controversy surrounding the citizenship of the mother of presidential candidate Hazem Abu-Ismail and whether she died while she was an American citizen, presidential candidate Abdel Moneim Abul-Fotouh found himself the target of claims that he holds the citizenship of a foreign country.  

El-Badeel News website published a report claiming that a security source said that Abul-Fotouh can’t run in May's presidential elections because he has Qatari citizenship, adding that that he got it in mid-1990s with an exception allowed from the Emir of Qatar that he keep his Egyptian citizenship.

El-Badeel added that Abul-Fotouh did not use the alleged Qatari passport for nearly 10 years.

Ahram Online contacted the Abul-Fotouh campaign and asked if the claims about Qatari citizenship were true. “Abul-Fotouh has never had citizenship or a passport from another country in his life,” Ali Bahanassawy, spokesperson of the Abul-Fotouh campaign, told Ahram Online.

Besides Abu Ismail and Abul-Fotouh, presidential candidate Mohamed Salim El-Awa denied Wednesday that his parents were Syrians after rumours spread that his parents were originally from Syria.

According to Egyptian Presidential Elections Law, presidential candidates should be solely Egyptian, having never had foreign nationality, whose parents and grandparents also had or have only Egyptian nationality.