Emirati officials on Saturday deported former Egyptian prime minister and presidential hopeful Ahmed Shafiq from the Gulf country he had been living in since 2012 to Egypt, after he announced his candidacy in upcoming elections, two of his aides told reporters.
Shafiq landed in Cairo airport on Saturday evening and quickly left for an unknown destination, an airport official said.
His relatives told reporters almost six hours after his arrival that they did not know his whereabouts.
The move comes days after Shafiq, in exile in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) since 2012, announced his candidacy in next year’s election and then said he was being prevented from leaving the country, angering his Emirati hosts.
The UAE state news agency WAM had reported that Shafiq left the country for Egypt, while his family stayed behind, but did not mention that he had been deported.
Shafiq, a former Egyptian army general appointed as prime minister by former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, had narrowly lost an election to former Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi in 2012, a year after Mubarak’s overthrow.
He was placed on trial after the polls on corruption charges and acquitted, and one of Shafiq’s lawyers last year said that he was free to return to Egypt.
One aide said she witnessed officials arriving at his Abu Dhabi house and was told that Shafiq, seen as a main challenger to Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi, would be deported to Egypt on a private plane.
“They took him from the house and put him on a private plane. They said he would go back to Cairo because they can deport him only to his home country,” she said.
Another aide confirmed that he would be deported to Cairo and his lawyer, Dina Adly, wrote on Facebook that Shafiq had been “arrested” to be sent home.
After his arrival, relatives said they had lost touch with him.
“We don’t know where he is, he hasn’t called anyone, even his lawyer,” one said.
An aide had previously said Shafiq would leave the UAE over the weekend for France and other European countries before returning to Egypt.
After he announced his candidacy on Wednesday, Egypt’s pro-government media and some officials assailed Shafiq, who is seen as the only challenger to al-Sisi with even a remote chance of winning a large number of votes.
Another tentative candidate, leftist Khaled Ali, is facing legal troubles that might prevent him from registering, while a hitherto unknown army colonel has also announced his candidacy.
Al-Sisi, a former army chief who toppled Morsi in 2013 following mass protests against the latter, won an election in 2014.
He is certain to run in next year’s election, although he has not formally announced his candidacy yet.
The authorities under al-Sisi had launched a bloody crackdown on Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood group that extended to secular and non-Muslim dissidents as well.
Al-Sisi has undertaken tough economic reforms that saw the Egyptian pound lose more than half its value while inflation skyrocketed, supported by a US$12 billion loan from the IMF.
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