JORDAN: Egyptian rights activist barred from entering Jordan

Gamal Eid did not expect Jordanian authorities to hold a grudge for so long.

Two years after he criticized Jordan for its poor record on freedom of speech, the Egyptian human-rights activist was detained by Jordanian security officials as soon as he landed in Amman on Dec. 15.

Hours later, he was deported to Cairo.

Eid is the director of the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information, or ANHRI.

He was invited to Jordan to attend a workshop for journalists held by the Swedish International Cooperation Agency, according to a statement posted on the ANHRI website Tuesday.

That was about two years after Eid openly criticized freedom of expression in a number of Middle Eastern countries, one of which was Jordan, as a speaker in a media conference in November 2006 in Amman, the statement said.

Back then, the Egyptian activist says he was warned by a Jordanian security official that he should think twice before considering any future visits to Amman again. But Eid reportedly never took this warning seriously.

Eid's organization said that it was not within any government's authority to detain someone for expressing an opinion, adding that Jordan pretends to embrace a motto uttered by the country's king, "Freedom of expression in Jordan is limited only by the sky."

The statement said:

"Maybe the Jordan Intelligence Agency has the right to prevent Gamal Eid from entering Jordan, but it doesn't have the right to arrest and detain him in this way, because he has not been charged with any crime, unless criticism of the state of freedom of expression in Jordan is a crime calling for such a punishment."

The incident did not stop with his temporary detention. He was also shaken down. Eid says he was asked for a bribe by one of the security officers at the airport, an offer he says he rejected.

"I don't know whether bribery was necessary to keep me out of the filthy cell in which I was detained in or to let me into Jordan, in any case I refuse on principle to pay any bribe," Eid said.

-- Khaled Hijab and Raed Rafei in Beirut

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Comments

[Sean]

This doesn't surprise me. Although the powers that be in Jordan like to depict themselves as moderate, Jordan is not a moderate state but a police state by the standards of most of us.