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Egypt bans, deports Tunisian writer

January 5, 2016 at 10:24 am

Prominent Tunisian writer and academic Amel Grami was banned and deported upon her arrival to Cairo airport on Sunday.

Grami was scheduled to participate in a three-day seminar organised by Bibliotheca Alexandrina in collaboration with Al-Azhar on tackling extremism and terrorism.

She was detained for more than 14 hours, Grami wrote on Facebook, and was flown out of the country after being told that she was “a threat to national security”.

“I was banned from entering Egypt because I am a national security threat,” Grami said, “When my pen is treated like a sword, a spear or a Kalashnikov, threatening a country’s security, it makes me wonder what is this that my hands have picked up?”.

Grami is a professor of sociology at Manouba University in Tunisia and had been a weekly contributor to the Egyptian newspaper Al-Shorouk.