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U.S. Pressing Interpol to Deny Egypt's Request to Arrest Quangos | |||||||||
2012-04-05 | |||||||||
The Obama administration is petitioning Interpol to deny EgyptÂ’s request for the arrest of American and other nongovernmental workers accused of illegally operating democracy programs and stirring unrest, in a push to prevent further escalation of the planned prosecution that sparked the worst crisis in U.S.-Egypt relations in three decades.
Cairo’s continued plans to prosecute the NGO workers is a sharp rebuke to the U.S., which has been pressing Egypt to drop the criminal charges against 43 nongovernmental workers—17 of them Americans—from the Washington-based National Democratic Institute, International Republican Institute, Freedom House, and International Center for Journalists.
Shortly after Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton signed off on military aid to Cairo, Egypt asked Interpol to issue so-called red notices for other nongovernmental workers who were not in Egypt at the time, or in some cases, who never worked there at all.
If convicted, they could face a hefty financial penalty and up to five years in an Egyptian prison. The State and Justice departments, as well as Interpol headquarters in France and its bureau in Washington, all declined to comment on Egypt’s request for the red notices, which are usually viewed as precursors to filing extradition papers. “The United States is making known in every relevant forum, and before every relevant agency, its objection to these politically motivated trials in Egypt,” State Department spokesman Edgar Vasquez told National Journal. Successfully convincing Interpol that Egypt’s prosecution is politically motivated would prevent the organization from issuing the red notices, because its constitution mandates neutrality and strictly forbids it to undertake any intervention in matters of “political, military, religious or racial character.” The United States, unlike many of the 190 countries participating in the international police organization, is not obligated to arrest anyone on its soil subject to a red notice because it does not view this as “probable cause” for an arrest warrant, according to Douglas McNabb, a Washington-based international criminal lawyer. Individuals wanted under red notices can appeal Interpol’s decision in a process that can take months or even years, said McNabb, who specializes in Interpol notice removal and international extradition. “It’s serious when someone files a red notice,” McNabb told NJ. “It’s used to try and locate an individual with a view of later having them put in extradition proceedings.” Those who are listed under Interpol’s red notices are effectively “landlocked,” McNabb said, because they are likely to be arrested if they travel to other countries. There may be even bigger legal battles ahead for the U.S. government if Egypt chooses to follow up with extradition requests. In that case, the U.S. would have to abide by its extradition treaty with Cairo and arrest the suspects, McNabb said. A U.S. judge would then decide whether the individual is extraditable or not. However, the U.S. government would be forced into the uncomfortable position of having to represent Egypt in court-- against the American defendants it considers to be wrongly accused of violating Egypt's highly restrictive laws on civil society.
IRI’s Egypt country director Sam LaHood, has dismissed as “malarkey” the claims by Naga, who is a holdover from Mubarak’s government. “She’s alleged that the U.S. government is actively trying to sow unrest, trying to divide Egypt, and undermine the revolution,” LaHood told National Journal upon returning to Washington last month. “For a minister of another country to allege those things in a court of law and in public seems outrageous, and she points to our organizations as tools that are doing that.”
Dunne, who has no plans to return to Egypt, said his lawyers plan to argue Freedom House did “nothing wrong” in court next week. The group had submitted its registration papers just before the late December raid in which the Egyptian authorities seized all their equipment and paperwork and sealed the offices. IRI and NDI had been granted permission to monitor the parliamentary elections just before Egyptian prosecutors raided their bureaus, backed by police and military forces carrying machine guns. Freedom House’s Sherif Mansour, an Egyptian who just received American citizenship days ago, has not been in Egypt since July and was surprised to find out about the charges against him through a news conference in February. “They one-sidedly declared me a fugitive,” said Mansour, who like Dunne still hasn’t seen any official documents proving he is actually being charged with crimes in Egypt. “That shows how political this case is,” Mansour said. “…It is basically meant to indict people in front of the media and publish their image from the start."
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Posted by:Steve White |