An Egyptian rights activist says security officials at Cairo airport have prevented him from traveling to Germany where he was to speak before the parliament there about human rights violations in Egypt.
The decision Tuesday to bar Mohammed Lotfy, a former Amnesty International researcher who co-founded the Egyptian Commission for Rights and Freedoms, comes on the same day Egypt’s President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi makes his first official visit to Germany.
The German parliament’s speaker cancelled a meeting with el-Sissi over what he called pervasive human rights abuses in Egypt.
Lotfy said no official reason was given for barring him, but his passport was confiscated. He said it was “concerning” that the Egyptian state was worried about one person’s critical voice while hundreds of el-Sissi supporters had already traveled to Berlin.
