Egypt says no arrest warrant for Clooney

Egypt’s Interior Ministry on Saturday denied that an arrest warrant had been issued for human rights lawyer Amal Clooney or that she was barred from entering the country over a report compiled by her legal team, criticising Egypt’s judiciary.

“The claims made by Clooney are not true,” Interior Ministry spokesman Hani Abdel-Latif said.

“She was not threatened with detention and her claims are baseless,” he told Anadolu Agency by phone.

Abdul-Latif denied reports that Clooney was banned from entering Egypt.

On Friday, the British newspaper The Guardian said that Egyptian officials had warned Clooney that she risked arrest after she identified the serious flaws in Egypt’s judicial system that subsequently contributed to the conviction of three Al-Jazeera journalists almost a year ago.

According to the newspaper, the report in question was compiled before Clooney joined the defence team of one of the jailed journalists and that it cast doubt on the independence of Egypt’s judicial system.

The Guardian said the report noted that “officials in the ministry of justice have wide powers over nominally independent judges, and highlighted the control the government can exert over state prosecutors.”

“Officials deemed the report so controversial that they threatened her [Clooney’s] team with arrest should they have tried to present its findings inside Egypt,” The Guardian reported.

“Does the report criticise the army, the judiciary, or the government?” Clooney told the British newspaper quoting Egyptian government officials when she and her team wanted to present the report’s findings in Egypt.

“Well, yes,” she said. “Well then, you’re risking arrest,” she added quoting the same officials.

The report had recommended ending “the practice that allows Egyptian officials to handpick judges for certain politicised cases,” which, according to Clooney, “wasn’t followed.”

On Thursday, Egypt’s highest appellate court ordered the retrial of the three Al-Jazeera journalists who have been imprisoned on charges of abetting terrorists and broadcasting false news.