Sisi issues decree allowing deportation of jailed foreigners

President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi issued a decree on Wednesday allowing him, after the approval of the cabinet, to deport non-Egyptians convicted of crimes to their home countries, Egyptian state media reported.

The law appears to indicate that any release would follow the final disposition of a case and the exhaustion of any appeals. 

The move could lead to the release of at least one of three Al Jazeera English news channel journalists - Peter Greste, an Australian citizen - who has been imprisoned for almost a year.

The text of the law makes no mention of whether dual citizens like Greste’s colleague Mohamed Fahmy, who holds a dual Egyptian and Canadian citizenship, would be eligible for release.

Greste, Fahmy and Baher Mohamed, the third member of the detained Aljazeera journalists, were convicted in June of conspiring with the Muslim Brotherhood to broadcast false news. They were sentenced to between seven and 10 years in prison after a trial that was dismissed as a sham by human rights activists.

Fahmy’s family said Wednesday that he did not want to be deported. “He did nothing wrong, and he’s loyal to his country,” his fiancée, Marwa Omara, said according to the New York Times.

The case has drawn international condemnation and has been an embarrassment for the Egyptian government, focusing attention on the plight of thousands of other people swept up by the authorities as part of a crackdown on opponents.

Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director at New York-based avocacy group Human Rights Watch, commented on the sentences at the time by saying: “Egypt is punishing people for exercising basic rights that are essential to any democratic transition.”

“In President Sisi’s Egypt, simply practising professional journalism is a crime, and the new constitution’s guarantees of free expression are not worth the paper they’re written on,” Stork said.

In a separate case, it also remains to be seen whether the decree could end the imprisonment of Mohamed Soltan, a dual American-Egyptian citizen who was arrested more than a year ago on charges that included organising Islamist protests. Soltan is in critical condition after continuing a hunger strike for months.