Western Collusion With Egypt’s Reign of Terror
Germany’s detention without charge of a journalist critical of Abdul Fattah al-Sisi is part of a pattern of Western collusion in Egypt’s war on democracy
Why was Al Jazeera journalist, Ahmed Mansour, detained by German authorities under an Egyptian arrest warrant for three days, before being released without charge?
The popular Egyptian-British presenter, who hosts Al Jazeera’s Arabic-language show “Without Frontiers,” told a press conference this Tuesday that the German government had still failed to explain why he had been arrested and detained in the first place.
According to initial reports, German authorities had detained Mansour on the basis of an “international arrest warrant” and extradition request from Egypt. Of course, there is no such thing as an international arrest warrant.
Political decision
Those vague claims were followed by a more official explanation, put forward by a German government spokesperson, that the Egyptian arrest warrant came through via Interpol’s “red notice” system. In October 2014, Mansour was convicted in absentia – without trial – for the trumped up charge of torturing a lawyer in Tahrir Square in 2011.
But Interpol has confirmed that there was no such notice for Mansour, and had refused to issue the Cairo warrant.
Germany has not signed an extradition treaty with Egypt, and so is under no obligation to consider such a request. So why did Germany decide to accede to the request?
According to the German publication, Zeit Online, before making its decision to arrest and detain Mansour, the German Federal Office of Criminal Investigation took the step of asking Germany’s Ministry of Justice and Federal Foreign Office to assess the case against Mansour. Only after those reviews was Mansour detained at Berlin’s Tagel Airport. There can be no doubt, then, that this was a political decision.
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