So here is what happened monday when I was detained for a few hours in Cairo airport.

The Short Version

nothing happened, someone made false criminal accusations about me, the case is in the court, I have good lawyers, we don't know details yet but highly unlikely it has anything to do with the regime and chances of me being convicted are very slim. nothing to see here except waste of tax payers money, valuable pro bono attorney time and 3 hours of my life.

that's all there is to it you don't need to read the long version.

The Very Long Version

we've been living and working in Pretoria, South Africa for a year now. back in February our passports where stolen. for incomprehensible bureaucratic reasons Egyptian embassies are no longer allowed to issue passports so we had to go back to Egypt just to get new passports.

Our friendly embassy gave us a temporary travel document, it is the same document they give to people being deported (illegal immigrants for instance). so we expected to have a rough time at Cairo airport. this is exacerbated by Egyptian security being paranoid about lost passports and treating it as a matter of national security.

so we had to spend 6 hours waiting at the airport for our papers to pass by several agencies and security checks by various police departments, among them the notorious state security responsible for handling political enemies of the state.

this is the "normal" procedure people who enter cairo airport without passports go through, being activists was not an issue, in fact we did not raise any flags at state security and we passed that step with boredom as the only threat.

the last step was a routine computer search for any outstanding arrest warrants or court orders and rulings against us. thanks to our new smart and connected e-government we have a central database for these things now, u go through that routine check if you are stopped by the police for any reason including passing a red traffic light. it is not unheard of for people to be surprised by cases against them that they knew nothing about yet appear to have being going on for years.

Manal passed this final check without raising any flags, but it turned out that in November 2009 I was sentenced in absentia for one year in prison in a case of cheque fraud. and so I was arrested.

some context before I explain what this is about.  read more »

a verdict is not really a verdict