The wrong notes

Canadians who get into trouble abroad want to know their government will go to bat for them. If they are caught up in political turmoil through no fault of their own, they especially want to know they won’t be left twisting in the wind.

Mohamed Fahmy, the Al Jazeera journalist who was imprisoned in Egypt for more than 400 days for the alleged crime of “spreading false news,” was not abandoned by the Canadian government. But now that he is safely back in Canada, he is making it clear that Ottawa could have been much more effective in advocating on his behalf.

At the very least, Prime Minister Stephen Harper could have been more adroit in combining public diplomacy with behind-thescenes lobbying to free Fahmy much sooner.

There’s no reason to believe the Harper government deliberately let Fahmy languish in prison because, as some have suggested, he was born in Egypt and thus doesn’t quite qualify as a “real Canadian.” Fahmy himself told the Star’s editorial board on Wednesday that he doesn’t think there was any such ill will from the government.

Likewise, there’s no reason to think that having the prime minister publicly berate the Egyptian government right off the bat would have been a wise tactic. No government, certainly not one as sensitive to nationalist feelings as that of Egypt, can be seen to be bowing before a foreign power.

Still, the Harper government managed to sound precisely the wrong notes right from the start.

The time to have intervened strongly, in a personal but private appeal by Harper to Egypt’s president Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, would have been immediately after Fahmy and his journalist colleagues were detained in December 2013. That would be before their cases got too far along in the Egyptian court system, and it would be easier to have the legal proceedings stopped.

Instead, Ottawa soft-pedalled the case for months and actually went out of its way to make excuses for Egypt’s military government. Just three weeks after Fahmy and the Al Jazeera team were imprisoned, Harper went to Israel and hailed the military coup that brought el-Sissi to power as a “return to stability.”

Harper might have spoken out last year when Fahmy was put on trial. That’s what Australia’s then-prime minister Tony Abbott did on behalf of his citizen Peter Greste, another member of the Al Jazeera team.

The entire Australian parliament — including members of Abbott’s right-leaning government — united in demanding Greste’s release. From Ottawa, there was no such strong message.

The result: Greste was freed last February, while Fahmy spent almost eight more months behind bars.

Only now that Fahmy is back in Canada and freely criticizing the government have senior officials made clear that Harper did in fact speak personally to el-Sissi about the issue and press the issue with the Egyptian president. That does him credit — but it’s hard not to feel that a bolder approach from the start would likely have ended this sorry affair much sooner. That’s the takeaway for future governments.

A bolder approach from the start would likely have ended this sorry affair much sooner