CAIRO: After being arrested at Berlin’s Tegel airport Saturday, Al-Jazeera Arabic journalist Ahmed Mansour has accused the German authorities of being “tools and partners to the Egyptian coup regime in its crimes”.
The Egyptian-British journalist was sentenced in absentia to 15 years in prison, along with three Muslim Brotherhood leaders, in October 2014 over torturing a lawyer during the 2011 uprising.
On his official Facebook page, Mansour said he was under preliminary investigations and his lawyers informed him the arrest was ordered by the German authorities, rather than the Interpol.
“It is possible that there was a secret agreement relating to me personally during [President Abdel Fatah] al-Sisi’s recent visit to Germany,” Mansour, 52, quoted his lawyer as saying.
During his June 2 visit to Germany, Sisi defended mass preliminary death sentences against Brotherhood members, including former President Mohamed Morsi.
There is neither an extradition agreement nor judicial cooperation between Egypt and Germany, according to Assistant to the Minister of Justice Adel Fahmy; however, Egypt’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Badr Adel Atty told The Cairo Post the Egyptian government is following up with its German counterpart to deport Mansour to Egypt.
Mansour will be reinvestigated Monday, German diplomats in Cairo and Berlin following up the investigations told Youm7 on the condition of anonymity. The diplomats added that the Egyptian Interpol submitted videos and documents to the German embassy, “proving” Mansour’s implication in the torture incident.
The civil plaintiff, lawyer Osama Kamal, says he was tortured Feb. 3, 2011 for three days in a travel company near Tahrir Square. Four other defendants were sentenced to three years in prison over the same charges.
In case Mansour was deported to Egypt, his sentence would be revoked and he would be retried.
Mansour posted on his Facebook page a scan of Germany’s arrest request, which he refused to sign, as well as an October 2014 Interpol email message advising it rejected an Egyptian request to issue a red notice against him.
If the Egyptian authorities did not assign a German lawyer, Mansour’s deportation could fail due to Egyptian lawyers’ lack of experience in dealing with European laws, Egyptian lawyer Khaled Abu Bakr told Youm7.
“It does mean anything that a state likes Germany supports the dictatorial regime in Egypt,” Mansour said in a video he posted following the detention.
A petition has been created to call on German chancellor Angela Merkel to release Mansour; over 16,571 people have signed it thus far.