Canadian PM 'let me down' says freed Al Jazeera reporter

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-34419772

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Al Jazeera journalist Mohammed Fahmy, recently released from prison in Egypt, has accused Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper of letting him down.

Fahmy, a Canadian national, told the BBC Mr Harper's approach to negotiating his freedom had been too mild and lessons must be learned.

Fahmy and Baher Mohamed, an Egyptian reporter with Al Jazeera, were freed last week after receiving pardons.

They had been sentenced to three years in jail for broadcasting false news.

Egyptian state media said a third person involved in the case was also pardoned. It is not clear if this is the Australian journalist Peter Greste, who was deported from the country in February.

Prosecutors accused them of collaborating with the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood after the overthrow of President Mohammed Morsi by the military in 2013.

The journalists denied the allegation and said they were simply reporting the news. Legal experts said the charges had been unfounded and politically motivated.

'Cracking down'

In the BBC HARDtalk interview, Fahmy said: "I do believe Prime Minister Stephen Harper let me down."

He said the Canadian government "should have put more clout and stepped up the way the Australian government did in their lobbying to release me."

"For example, the (former) Prime Minister of Australia, Tony Abbott, he called (Egyptian) President (Abdul Fattah al) Sisi about three times when Peter was in prison. The Canadian prime minister didn't."

Fahmy, who renounced his Egyptian citizenship in February to qualify for deportation, also stressed that "many innocent Canadians tomorrow morning could be in my same situation. There are certain approaches that need to be taken to better protect the citizens and extract them".

However, he also thanked Canadian diplomats who then "really stepped up their approach".

The Canadian government has so far made no public statements regarding Fahmy's comments.

He also recalled his ordeal in the Egyptian jail, saying that "I do remember cracking down for the first time after I was sentenced to seven years".

In August, the three Al Jazeera journalists were sentenced to three years in prison after a retrial.

In the BBC interview, Fahmy also revealed that after the presidential pardon "the cops just dropped us (Fahny and Mohamed) in the street with our prison garb and no money, no mobile phones".

"It was surreal in every sense of the word."

The pardons were issued by President Sisi ahead of the Islamic festival of Eid al-Adha and a day before he travelled to New York to address the UN General Assembly.

He had said he would be willing to pardon the Al Jazeera journalists once the judicial process had ended.

'Hasty verdict'

The case against the journalists began in December 2013, when they were arrested at a hotel used by Al Jazeera English to report from Cairo after its bureau was raided by police.

The journalists were initially convicted in June 2014 after a trial that was widely condemned. Greste and Fahmy were sentenced to seven years in prison, while Mohamed was given a 10-year sentence after also being found guilty of possessing a spent bullet casing.

In January, Egypt's Court of Cassation ordered a retrial after ruling that the original court had been "hasty in pronouncing its verdict".

Their convictions at retrial on 29 August were described as an "outrage" and an embarrassment for President Sisi by Amal Clooney, one of Fahmy's lawyers.