Move to expel Norwegian TV from Egypt

GNRD's ally seeks reprisal over accusations

 
An Egyptian human rights organisation has filed a lawsuit which seeks to have the Norwegian state broadcaster, NRK, banned from reporting in Egypt.

The legal move was initiated by Maat for Peace, Development and Human Rights, an Egyptian ally of the Global Network for Rights and Development (GNRD), a quasi-NGO which is based in Norway and funded from the United Arab Emirates.

GNRD and its founder, Loai Deeb, are currently the subject of a $13 million money-laundering investigation by the Norwegian authorities (see previous blog posts). Maat's action is clearly intended as a reprisal against Norway.
  

 
The money-laundering investigation is believed to have started when large transfers of money from the UAE to GNRD (and Deeb personally) triggered alarms in the banking system but GNRD has been attempting to politicise the affair, claiming that Norway is acting under pressure from Qatar and that police raids on its offices and Deeb's home last May were an abuse of human rights.

Referring to Maat's lawsuit in Egypt, an announcement on GNRD's website says:

"The human rights organisation [i.e. Maat] in its lawsuit (ref /71184) called on both the head of the General Authority of Information and the Director of the Foreign Correspondents Center to cancel the licence granted to the Norwegian state television team.

"Maat pointed out that, on 17 June this year, it issued with 173 Egyptian civil society statement of solidarity with Global Network for Rights and Development (GNRD), which suffered unjustified violations by the Norwegian police and earlier faced a campaign of systematic attacks, orchestrated by an Arab country hostile to the organisation, as a result of its criticism of the human rights record of the concerned country.

"The Egyptian human rights organisation added, 'The coverage of the Norwegian state television reporter was lacking neutrality, and based on fabricated lies, in contrasts with the work ethics of the media'."

Maat and GNRD worked together last year as observers of the presidential election in Egypt which legitimised Sisi's seizure of power. They later produced an enthusiastic report hailing the election as "a unique process toward democratic transition". A senior member of GNRD's observer team was Anne-Marie Lizin, a disgraced Belgian politician with a conviction for electoral malpractice.

GNRD, Maat and another GNRD ally – the Swiss-based 
International Institute for Peace, Justice and Human Rights (IIPJHR) – have since been approved by the Sisi regime to observe Egypt's forthcoming (but long delayed) parliamentary elections. 

In a statement yesterday to MENA, the Egyptian government's news agency, GNRD chief Loai Deeb described Sisi's election as "one of the greatest epics of democratic transition in the world" and said that the alliance of organisations monitoring the parliamentary elections would be "the largest mission in the history of Africa", with 7,000 local and international observers.