German prosecutors on Monday in Berlin said they were releasing Ahmed Mansour, the Al Jazeera journalist detained in Berlin whose extradition was being sought by Egypt.
They said German authorities would not meet Egypt’s request to extradite Mansour, 52, who was accused by Cairo of fanning support for the Muslim Brotherhood.
Mansour was detained on Saturday as he was boarding a plane for Qatar where his employers are based.
Martin Schaefer, Foreign Ministry spokesman, said nobody who risked being sentenced to death abroad would be extradited from Germany.
“We doubt that certain people can expect a fair trial,” Schaefer said.
German authorities said at a news conference that Mansour had been detained at Tegel airport on Saturday because of an Egyptian arrest warrant passed to Germany by Interpol last October.
It said it was reviewing claims that the warrant had been void.
Meanwhile, reporters at a news conference had questioned why the Justice and Foreign Ministries failed to block the warrant and routinely passed it along to federal police who patrol German airports.
Mansour’s lawyer, Fazli Altin, told reporters that there was no international arrest warrant in force.
Altin said the charges laid against Mansour were vague, namely that he spread falsehoods that endangered Egypt’s internal security.
Cairo accuses Al Jazeera, which was sympathetic to the Muslim Brotherhood, of supporting Islamist terrorism.
Hisham Barakat, Egypt’s Prosecutor-General, said on Monday in Cairo that his office requested Mansour’s extradition after the arrest.
Barakat said the papers sent to Germany covered a torture case for which Mansour had been sentenced by a Cairo court to 15 years in jail.
He said it also covered orders for his arrest on separate charges of inciting murder and inciting violence.
The journalist was convicted of participating in the torture of a lawyer during the 2011 uprising against the former government.
dpa/NAN.
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