Clooney heads to Egypt as end game nears for Fahmy
Lawyer told Canadian journalist’s release is near
Amal Clooney had hoped to be in Toronto for the homecoming of her Canadian client, Mohamed Fahmy, former Cairo bureau chief for Al Jazeera English, who has been jailed for over a year in Egypt on charges of falsifying news during civil unrest and having terrorist links to the Muslim Brotherhood.
Instead, the London-based barrister who has previously won the freedom of Ukrainian politician Yulia Tymoshenko, and acted for clients as diverse as Wikileaks founder Julian Assange and the Kingdom of Cambodia, is now bound for Cairo to visit Mr. Fahmy in his cell at the notorious Tora Prison, as he awaits a new trial later this week.
For Ms. Clooney, who attracts intense public attention because of her marriage to the actor George Clooney, the change of plans sets up the opportunity for her to upstage the government of Canada, whose representatives have been little more than “messengers” between “low ranking officials” in this diplomatic mess, according to Mr. Fahmy’s brother Adel.
In a letter this weekend to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, copied to the government of Canada, Ms. Clooney requested a private meeting in Cairo, and asked for Mr. Fahmy’s “immediate” freedom.
“Despite clear assurances that he would be released, Mr. Fahmy remains in detention in Egypt. I therefore plan to visit Cairo in the near future to meet with Mr. Fahmy and to discuss the prospects for his release,” reads the letter, which describes his detention as “illegal.”
That request, which has been acknowledged by Egyptian authorities, sets up the glamorous image of a jetsetting celebrity human rights lawyer staring down the cold-eyed soldier who rules Egypt, all in defence of a captive Canadian journalist. It comes just a week after then foreign minister John Baird said Mr. Fahmy’s release and deportation to Toronto was “imminent,” which turned out not to be the case.
“She is not hired because of her celebrity status,” Adel Fahmy said. Last month, she was refused a meeting with Mr. Baird to discuss the case. But there are signs she is a step ahead of Canadian authorities.
In a discussion this weekend with Ms. Clooney, Canada’s ambassador to Egypt, Troy Lulashnyk, gave “100% assurances” that Mr. Fahmy’s deportation to Canada was imminent, “a matter of when, not yes or no,” Adel Fahmy said.
Ms. Clooney, however, told him “the Canadian government is not speaking to the right people, that they are not being aggressive enough.”
Sure enough, hours later, Egyptian authorities announced Mr. Fahmy will face a new trial later this week, following an appeal in January that overturned his convictions and seven-year sentence.
As a moment of high international tension, a meeting between Ms. Clooney and Mr. Sisi would recall other high-stakes cases she has pursued, such as the failed defence of Mr. Assange against extradition to Sweden on sex charges, which saw him take refuge in London’s Ecua- dorean embassy; or her efforts at the European Court of Human Rights, which led to Ms. Tymoshenko’s release in 2014 after two years in prison for alleged embezzlement.
Ms. Clooney has acted for the prosecution in the bombing death of Rafic Hariri, former prime minister of her native Lebanon, at the Special Tribunal for Lebanon in The Hague. She was an assistant to the judge at the trial of Slobodan Milosevic at the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. Now she acts for Greece against Britain in the fight over the Elgin marbles.
She has also acted for Cambodia in its successful dispute with Thailand at the International Court of Justice over the ruins of the Temple of Preah Vihear, a 1,000-year-old Hindu shrine on the border, and for Abdullah al-Senussi, former spy chief of deposed Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, until his case was rejected by the International Criminal Court.
She is a protégé of Geoffrey Robertson, who has a similar reputation as a globe-trotting legal swashbuckler, and has represented many clients in cases about freedom of expression, including Salman Rushdie and the Canadian artist Rick Gibson, who was convicted in England of outraging public decency for exhibiting earrings made with dehydrated human fetuses.
In 2013, she started dating Mr. Clooney and her public profile exploded. They were engaged the following spring, and married in Venice last September.
Mr. Fahmy’s case began in 2013, when he and two Al Jazeera English colleagues, Peter Greste and Baher Mohamed — known in the local press as the “Marriott Cell” for their base in a Cairo hotel — were arrested over their coverage of the violent crackdown on Islamist protests following the military overthrow of President Mohammed Morsi in 2013. Egyptian authorities accused them of providing a platform for Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood, now declared a terrorist organization. Convictions followed in what Ms. Clooney has called a “show trial.”
All were sentenced to seven years, and Mr. Mohamed received an additional three years for his possession of a spent bullet.