He said that he had feared he would be prevented from leaving Egypt right up until the moment that his Egypt Air flight departed from Cairo airport on Monday. Only then was he sure that his name had been removed from a government no-fly list.
“The Canadian ambassador [Troy Lulashnyk] walked me right to the gate to make sure I was on the plane. You could see that me, him, Marwa [Omara] – my wife – and the consular team were still nervous that my name might still be on the list,” he said. “It wasn’t, and that was the moment I knew it was finally over.”
The former al-Jazeera journalist, who became a cause célèbre during his legal battles in Egypt, will speak to international journalists later Wednesday at London’s Frontline Club. On Thursday, he is due to address a gathering of Middle East-focused academics at Chatham House.
Although his onward flight to Canada isn’t booked yet, Mr. Fahmy plans to try to use some of his newfound celebrity to start a debate about how the government can do a better job of protecting its citizens abroad. In an interview with The Globe and Mail, he also questioned why issues of race and religion – specifically the question of whether women can wear the niqab, a conservative Muslim face-cover, during citizenship ceremonies – have been thrust into the centre of the federal election campaign.
“I understand that during elections anywhere in the world, leaders have to appeal to the emotions of the people voting, but I believe that issues related to race and religious beliefs should not be a factor, and some people who are running [for election] are bringing these up.”
Mr. Fahmy – who was left without a passport during a brief release from prison while awaiting a retrial earlier this year – also criticized a new law allowing the government to revoke the Canadian citizenship of those convicted of terrorism charges, noting the law could have easily been used against him, even though the charges he faced of “aiding a terrorist group” were always considered to have been trumped up by the Egyptian government to punish his employer, Al Jazeera.
Mr. Fahmy was born in Cairo but moved with his family to Canada as a teenager. He had his original Canadian passport seized when he and two Al Jazeera colleagues were arrested in December, 2013. Earlier this year, he renounced his Egyptian citizenship in anticipation of being deported – as his one colleague, Australian citizen Peter Greste, had been – but the Conservative government refused for several months to issue him a new passport.
Mr. Fahmy’s initial sentence of seven years in prison was reduced to three years upon retrial. He and his Egyptian colleague Baher Mohamed were pardoned and released by President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi on Sept. 23.
Mr. Fahmy said that one of his goals while in London was to raise awareness of what he calls “the context” of his ordeal: The fact that Al Jazeera hired him in the fall of 2013 as its Cairo bureau chief without making him aware that its license to broadcast in the country had already lapsed by that point. Mr. Fahmy, who is suing Al Jazeera for $100-million in a British Columbia court, has accused the network of negligence that contributed to his troubles.
The 41-year-old has also alleged that the Qatar-based network – which supported Egypt’s former Muslim Brotherhood government – had a political axe to grind against Mr. el-Sissi’s military-dominated regime. “I do believe the network should be responsible for their misrepresentations that made our lives much more difficult.”
He also believes the Conservative government could have done more to help him, especially in the early days following his arrest, when he believes much could have been solved by a phone call from Prime Minister Stephen Harper to Mr. el-Sissi.
“In Egypt, or other countries that are hyper-sensitive about security, the intervention should have come from the most senior leader in Canada immediately, because any successful intervention could only happen in the first days [after the arrest] before it goes to court,” he said.
That inaction continued as recently as January of this year, when John Baird, the foreign minister at the time, refused to meet with Mr. Fahmy’s lawyer, Amal Clooney, ahead of a visit to Cairo.
Mr. Fahmy seems set to make a splash during the last 10 days of Canada’s election campaign. He said he has received invitations from all three main political parties to appear at their rallies, but has only agreed to meet New Democratic Party Leader Thomas Mulcair and Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau.
“I’m not endorsing any party over the others, but I do have to express gratitude to the NDP and Liberals for what they did throughout this ordeal by communicating directly with my family and my lawyers, and questioning Mr. Harper in Parliament about his mild approach to the case,” he said.
“There are lessons to be learned from this very complicated trial, and lessons for the government in protecting my fellow Canadians abroad.”
Politics aside, Mr. Fahmy said that he was most excited to finally bring Ms. Omara to Canada. The two got married earlier this year, while he was free from prison awaiting retrial.
“What I look forward to most is showing off Canada to my wife, who has never seen snow, never seen Canada, never experienced this beautiful, laid-back atmosphere. I believe she’ll be very happy in our new home.”
Original Article
Source: theglobeandmail.com/
Author: Mark MacKinnon
No comments:
Post a Comment