Amal Clooney slams Canadian government

Prominent human rights lawyer Amal Clooney slammed the Canadian government on Thursday, calling Ottawa's efforts to secure the repatriation of Al-Jazeera journalist Mohamed Fahmy from Egypt "woefully inadequate."

In a statement published by Doughty Street Chambers, an organization for lawyers in Britain, she accused Prime Minister Stephen Harper's government of making "sheepish whimpers" to Cairo as opposed to real efforts to ensure her client's return to Canada.

A court freed Fahmy, pending retrial, along with fellow defendant Baher Mohammed earlier this month. Both are charged with promoting the banned Muslim Brotherhood movement in their news coverage, a charge Fahmy dismissed as absurd.

A third defendant, Peter Greste, was released and deported to Australia under a new law signed by Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi last year. Clooney said she had expected Canada to secure a similar deal with Egypt like the one Canberra made.

Ottawa had indicated that Fahmy's release was "imminent" but then took no other steps to secure their citizen's freedom, Clooney charged.

"So what did Canada do? It published a short written statement by a junior minister calling the situation 'unacceptable'," Clooney said, adding that calls from Canadian society and politicians to Harper to intervene in a meaningful way had "fallen on deaf ears."

Carl Vallee, a Harper spokesman, countered that the prime minister had personally raised the case with the Egyptian president. When asked if Harper actually had a phone conversation with al-Sisi or was at least trying to arrange one, Vallee declined to comment.

Clooney also had harsh words for Cairo. She said Egypt ought to send Fahmy home, considering how the court had acknowledged that the original judgment was "flimsy and based on conflicting reasoning." Though she laid most of the blame for Fahmy's continued presence in Egypt on Canada for not "enforcing an agreement reached with a sovereign state."

es/bk (AP, AFP)