Swedish journalist and blogger Per Bjorklund has been stopped around half an hour ago at the Cairo Airport. An Immigration Police Officer told him his “name [was] on the computer,” according to Per with whom I spoke on the phone few mins ago.
Per is in some room at the airport, where there are other people, and he awaits an explanation from the police.
Per has been one of the most active foreign journalists (if not the most active) in covering the Egyptian strike wave and human rights abuses, stringing for a number of Swedish publications as well as activist websites like the Electronic Intifada.
It’s 4:20am now: Per has been told by the Egyptian police he will be deported to Prague (from where he arrived) on the next plane.
It’s 4:44am now: Per’s mobile is switched off.
UPDATE: Tuesday 12:40pm: Per is still at the Cairo Airport, detained by the police, according to AP. He awaits deportation on the next flight to Prague, scheduled Thursday morning. Sarah Carr reports that the Swedish Embassy says Egyptian police have officially declared Per persona non grata..
UPDATE: Here is an AP report by Paul Schemm…
A Swedish journalist and blogger specializing in Egyptian labor issues was stopped by security at Cairo airport early Tuesday and was set to be deported from the country, his girlfriend and Egyptian bloggers said.
Per Bjorklund, who spent the last year covering labor strikes in Egypt, was returning to the country with his girlfriend from their native Sweden via Prague, when he was detained.
Earlier in September, an American citizen who participated in a pro-Palestinian demonstration with Bjorkland was also prevented from entering the country.
“They held his passport and they said I had to go on,” Bjorkland’s girlfriend Anna Sicking told The Associated Press. “They said something came up and they held him.”
Sicking waited six hours at the airport for Bjorklund until she was told he had been sent back to Prague.
Egyptian blogger and journalist Hossam el-Hamalawy spoke to Bjorklund at about 4:30 a.m. while he was in detention shortly before his mobile phone went silent.
“He was told his name was on a computer and he was to be returned to Prague,” he said.
A security official at the airport told AP that Bjorklund was detained by order of State Security, the nation’s plainclothes police organization, and he was still in custody awaiting deportation.
The next flight form Cairo Airport to Prague is early Thursday.
The Swedish Embassy in Cairo said they had been contacted by Bjorklund’s girlfriend but would not comment further.
Sicking said the embassy told her there was nothing they could do and he had probably written something they didn’t like.
“He’s Swedish, he writes in Swedish, there are 9 million people there, I don’t think it’s his writings that have got him in trouble,” said Sicking.
Bjorklund writes for Swedish publications on Egyptian labor issues, including a wave of strikes that has been taking place for the last two years. He also has a blog, “Egypt and beyond,” in English.
He has lived in Egypt for the last three years. The last time he entered the country was in September 2008, also when returning from spending the summer in Sweden.
On Sept. 3, U.S. citizen Travis Randall was also stopped at Cairo airport and deported from the country.
Both Randall and Bjorkland participated in a small demonstration showing solidarity with Palestinians trapped in Gaza last February. After several hours, the demonstrators were briefly detained by police.
A German-Egyptian activist, Philip Rizk, who participated in the same demonstration was held for four days in solitary confinement, apparently due to the government sensitivity over any criticism of its Palestinian policy.
Police have detained hundreds of members of the opposition Muslim Brotherhood and a number of bloggers following their criticism of Egypt’s involvement in the closure of the Gaza Strip, especially during the Israeli attacks there in late December.
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