Egyptian-Palestinian activist Ramy Shaath arrived in France Saturday after almost two and a half years in detention in Egypt, after his family said he had to renounce his Egyptian nationality.
The 48-year-old was a figure of the 2011 upris-ing in Egypt and the coordinator of the Egyptian chapter of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel.
An AFP correspondent saw the activist walk out of Charles De Gaulle Airport outside Paris with his wife.
His family said earlier that the son of veteran Palestinian politician Nabil Shaath was on his way to Paris, adding that they were “relieved and over-joyed” at his release after 900 days of “arbitrary detention” by the Egyptians.
But “we regret that they forced Ramy to re-nounce his Egyptian citizenship as a precondition for his release that should have been unconditional after two and a half years of unjust detention under inhumane conditions,” the family said in a state-ment.
“No one should have to choose between their freedom and their citizenship,” they said.
He was released on Thursday evening. The Egyptian authorities later handed Shaath over to a representative of the Palestinian Authority at Cairo airport, where he took a flight to Amman, the Jorda-nian capital, before heading onward to Paris, his family said.
French President Emmanuel Macron on Twitter saluted the Egyptian decision to free Shaath.
“I share the relief of his wife Celine Lebrun, who he will meet in France,” he wrote.
“Thank you to everyone who has played a posi-tive role in this happy outcome.” Shaath’s wife was deported from Egypt shortly after her husband’s arrest in July 2019 on charges of aiding a “terrorist organisation”.
In April 2020, Egypt placed him on a terror list alongside 12 other people. In December, five human rights groups had called on Macron to pressure Egypt to release Shaath.
Macron had previously addressed his detention in a news conference in Paris with Egyptian Presi-dent Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in December 2020.
Egypt’s space for dissent has been severely re-stricted since Sisi took office in 2014. Rights groups say Egypt is holding some 60,000 political prison-ers, many facing brutal conditions and overcrowded cells.
Egypt ranks in the lowest group on the Global Public Policy Institute’s Academic Freedom In-dex.—APP
