An Egyptian representative has come forward to deny a recent statement made by Saudi Arabia’s former ambassador to Egypt, claiming that the United States pressured the Egyptian military to lie about the results of the elections in 2012.

Former military intelligence officer, Tamer El-Shahawy, who was appointed to oversee the Egyptian presidential elections for the year 2012, released a statement denying the claims made by former Ambassador, Ahmed Kattan, that the elections that year had been fixed.

In his reaction statement, El-Shahawy said that Kattan’s allegations that the winner in the 2012 presidential elections in Egypt was Ahmed Shafik and not former President Mohamed Morsi, are wrong.

El-Shahawy said: “A few days ago, our friend Mr. Ahmed Kattan, former Saudi ambassador to Egypt, spoke on a TV programme and indicated that Shafik won the presidential elections in 2012 … I assure you that all the information or news that is circulating including the victory of Lieutenant General Shafik in the presidential elections in 2012 is completely untrue news and information.”

“I am writing here my testimony for the history that this is the true result from the reality of my presidency of the chambers of monitoring the elections during that period and that the military council did not interfere from near or far in the conduct of the electoral process and announced the result of the elections with the utmost transparency.”

He went on to attack Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood party, saying: “I am not mentioning here the voter fraud, buying the votes and threatening people who participated in the election, as well as news about forging ballots – a case known to media as the Amiri press, as 20 envelopes containing 100 ballots marked in favour of Mohamed Morsi were seized and the Public Prosecutor’s Office was notified of the incident.”

According to the numbers at the time, Muslim Brotherhood candidate Mohammed Morsi officially won the election with 51.7% of the votes, defeating former Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq.