A black eye for Canada
In going ahead with a retrial of the Canadian journalist Mohamed Fahmy, the Egyptian government is not only making a mockery of its own judicial system. It’s also spitting in the face of the Canadian government.
Until Sunday, Canadian officials had been reassuring Fahmy’s family and others that his release and deportation could be expected any day. John Baird, our foreign minister until a week ago, put his personal reputation on the line by telling journalists that Fahmy’s freedom was “imminent.”
Instead, as we now know, Fahmy and his Egyptian colleague Baher Mohamed face yet another trial on trumped-up charges of supporting terrorism and reporting “false news” about Egypt — stemming from their work in 2013 with the English service of the Al Jazeera news network.
This is a crushing blow for Fahmy and for free reporting everywhere. After13 months, Egyptian prosecutors have not managed to produce a shred of credible evidence that Fahmy and his Al Jazeera news team were doing anything but reporting on the turmoil that swept Egypt two years ago.
It’s also a humiliating snub to the Harper government, which had been lobbying Egypt to call an end to this farce and set Fahmy free. The Egyptians let Canadian officials continue to spread assurances in good faith about Fahmy before tossing them casually aside.
It’s particularly embarrassing for Ottawa since Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his ministers have gone far out on a limb to endorse the current Egyptian government of President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi.
Back in January of last year, Harper hailed the military coup led by el-Sissi against the democratically elected government of Mohammed Morsi as a “return to stability.” That, despite the widespread arrests, killings of many hundreds of political opponents, and mass death sentences that followed the coup. While other governments — including the U.S. — called for a return to civilian rule, Harper hugged el-Sissi and his government took a softlysoftly approach in advocating for Fahmy.
Now the reward for that is clear. While the Australian journalist Peter Greste has been freed and deported (his government loudly and successfully demanded his release in the same case), Fahmy languishes in prison and faces another trial as early as this week. Even renouncing his Egyptian citizenship as a prerequisite for being tossed out of the country made no difference.
No wonder Fahmy’s family has given up on the Harper government and its feeble efforts. “He has failed us immensely,” Fahmy’s brother Adel said on Sunday, lamenting Harper’s failure to speak out personally on the case.
Those who follow Fahmy’s ordeal closely say the twists and turns are the result of backstage struggles among various factions in Egypt’s military-political-judicial power structure. Even in an authoritarian regime, niceties must be preserved and the government cannot be seen simply to order the courts to deliver a particular verdict — especially at the behest of a foreign government.
But there’s no doubt where the ultimate power lies, and the charges against the Al Jazeera journalists have been a political put-up job from the beginning — involving rivalries between Egypt, Qatar (the network’s home base) and Saudi Arabia. It’s a disgrace that it has dragged on for so long. Our new foreign minister, Rob Nicholson, should make it his first order of business to protest this farce in the strongest possible terms.
New trial for Canadian journalist is an embarrassment to the Harper government