Former minister Alistair Burt

In line with the British government's sympathetic approach to "friendly" dictators, former Foreign Office minister Alistair Burt yesterday came close to excusing Egypt's imprisonment of three al-Jazeera journalists.

Appearing on the BBC's Westminster Hour, Burt was asked to comment on the release of one of the three – Australian Peter Greste – after 400 days in jail.

Burt welcomed the release of "the journalists" – apparently unaware that only one has so far been freed – and, rather incomprehensibly, explained the background to the case as an "immense struggle between the Muslim Brotherhood and the remnants of the Muslim Brotherhood". 

Blaming the al-Jazeera arrests on "a very conservative element in Egypt", Burt suggested the Sisi regime had to keep the journalists in jail for a while, otherwise it would have faced "some domestic pressure".

Here is a transcript of Burt's remarks (starting 17 min 45 sec into the programme):

"It's taken a year but I don't think anyone should be surprised. What's been going on in Egypt is this immense struggle between the Muslim Brotherhood and the remnants of the Muslim Brotherhood after the military intervention of General Sisi and then Field Marshall Sisi and now the president has been elected and the reason for the jailing and taking action was to demonstrate some sort of lesson, both to the Muslim Brotherhood and to al-Jazeera and to the Qataris by a very conservative element in Egypt.

"Now I think many in the Egyptian establishment and certainly in the diplomatic corps knew it was an international disaster but if the president had tried to intervene too early to change the sentences he would have been under some domestic pressure. 

"So we've seen some time being taken, lessons have been learned. I don't think anyone should be surprised at these releases. There would have been a lot of pressure on the Egyptians to do it but had he done so too early there would have been domestic difficulties. I think sometimes we always look at these matters from an external point of view rather than understanding what's going on inside. But I'm very pleased the journalists are free. It could never have been a good decision."

Burt was Britain's Foreign Office minister responsible for the Middle East between May 2010 and October 2013.     

Posted by Brian Whitaker
Monday 2 February 2015