Former Egyptian Finance Minister Youssef Boutros-Ghali was forced to leave a public lecture he was attending at the London School of Economics (LSE) after a group of attendees said they were appalled to see him in the audience.
Dina Makram-Ebeid, a PhD student in anthropology at LSE, was the first to report Boutros-Ghali’s presence at LSE.
She wrote on her Twitter account, “Youssef Boutros Ghali is here at LSE lecture abt Egyptian revolution! still playing in his damn blackberry! Can't believe he's free!”
Security escorted the former finance minister out of the hall after audience members called him out publicly.
Boutros-Ghali was attending a speaking event organized by the school titled "The Year of Egypt's Second Revolution: The Balance Sheet So Far," with Roger Owen, a professor of Middle East history at Harvard University, scheduled to speak.
Boutros-Ghali, widely viewed in Egypt as a public face of a government that enriched the wealthy at the expense of the poor, quit his post in late January then fled abroad, only days after the eruption of the mass uprising that later ousted former President Hosni Mubarak.
In June, an Egyptian court convicted Boutros-Ghali in absentia and sentenced him to 30 years in prison for profiteering and abusing state and private assets.
Makram-Ebeid later wrote on Twitter that she yelled to the audience that [Boutros-Ghali] “is a criminal sentenced to 30 years and is a fugitive, should be arrested now!!!“
"The LSE authorities should be ashamed of themselves," Makram-Ebeid told The Guardian.
When asked about Boutros-Ghali, the LSE events Twitter account wrote, "If he is at the event, from what we know then he has turned up of his own accord as a member of the audience, not invited by LSE."
