Egyptian pop singer Mustafa Amar has been accused of ordering his bodyguards to intimidate tenants of his family's building in Alexandria, according to press reports.
The tenants complained that the singer had ordered “a group of hardened thugs to attack women and children inside their homes,” said the Egyptian Mail on Saturday.
According to the tenants' account, quoted by the weekly Rose Al Yousef, Amar's parents were angry and feared that their prestige was undermined when tenants refused to install a relay station for a mobile phone company on the rooftop of the four-stores building.
According to experts, such stations are linked to certain kinds of cancer and other health hazards.
But the singer's family categorically denied the allegations. The Mail quoted his father, Ahmed Amar, 61, as saying, "These unfounded allegations are part of a campaign to damage my son's reputation and adversely affect his popularity."
Rose Al Yousef suggests that it did never occur to the singer's family that people would defy them, given their son's tremendous popularity and powerful connections.
One of the victims, named Mustafa Hussein, told the magazine that the singer was called upon by his parents to "give the tenants a good, hard lesson" for their defiance.
"Amar suddenly turned up, accompanied by his henchmen," the tenant said. He miraculously escaped the attack after he refused to go down to the street and meet the singer and his guards. "Amar arrogantly ordered me to come down and settle our differences," Hussein said. "I refused because I realized that his men were going to rough me up if I went downstairs." Hussein invited the singer to come up on his own to his flat so they could talk over the problem in a calm, civilized manner. "But he only refused and insulted me, using appalling language in front of my children," he continued.
The singer's father claimed, according to the Mail, that they had cancelled the contract with the mobile company long before the violence had broken out. But tenants insisted that, several hours before the violence erupted, the singer's family had carried up some of the equipment for the station up to the computer office on the first floor, waiting for the technicians to turn up and get on with the work.
However, none of the reports covering the story contacted the singer – Albawaba.com
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