Mohamed El Ghanem
| Mohamed El Ghanem | |
|---|---|
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| Born | Cairo, Egypt |
| Nationality | Egypt |
| Occupation | Lawyer & Swiss refugee |
| Known for | Detained seven years without charge by the Geneva Judiciary, for alleged retaliation for refusing to spy on the local muslim community. |
Dr. Mohamed El Ghanem is an Egyptian refugee detained without charge for seven years by the Geneva judiciary, between 2007 through 2013, allegedly in retaliation for refusing to spy on Geneva's Muslim community leaders.
Dr. El Ghanem was released shortly after the Swiss Supreme Court ruled his detention wrongful, requiring he be released in October 2013.
Dr. El Ghanem is a Professor of International law, having received his PhD from the University of Rome. Dr. El Ghanem authored a 1991 book on "Terrorism and the Law". As an Egyptian government official, he drafted much of the country's anti-terrorism legislation.
Prior to seeking asylum in Switzerland, El Ghanem was an Egyptian Government official, a Director in the Ministry of Interior, who also taught law at the police academy in Cairo. In the late 1990s, El Ghanem had differences with Egyptian government, because he refused to fabricate false charges against journalists and other dissidents. He subsequently became the target of persecution himself for contesting the persecution of others, at which point he sought asylum first in Italy, then in Switzerland.
Before he left Egypt, Dr. El Ghanem was well known for defending the rights of Egyptian Christians (Copts) who were at the time suffering under the church-building ban of President Hosni Mubarek. According to journalist Robert Fisk, Dr. El Ghanem's defense of Christian Copts made him a "thorn in the side of the Mubarek regime".
In 2000, Dr. El Ghanem fled Egypt, in the plane of Swiss Foreign Minister Joseph Deiss.
In 2001, Dr. El Ghanem received refugee status from the Swiss government.
In 2002, Dr. El Ghanem claims Swiss secret services began aggressively recruiting him as an informant, to spy on prominent local Muslim community figures, notably on Geneva imam Hani Ramadan. At the time, a large-scale operation of spying on the Geneva-based imam called "Operation Memphis" was in-play. To the chagrin of the Swiss security services, Mr. El Ghanem refused to collaborate as an informant. Pursuant to his refusal, he claimed to have received severe harassment and threats, by the same Swiss secret service officials. So Dr. El Ghanem filed charges against the Geneva police for the harassment. Dr. El Ghanem then claims he was menaced to remove the harassment charges he had filed.
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Wikipedia