Region | Egypt
Mubarak urged to sack minister
Foreign Minister Ahmad Abu Al Gait should be sacked for failing to give enough care for Egyptians working and living abroad, said Al Wahesh, who has filed a petition to President Hosni Mubarak to dismiss Al Gait.
- By Ramadan Al Sherbini, Correspondent
- Published: 22:45 July 9, 2009
- Image Credit: AP
- Egyptians flash a poster of Marwa during a protest in Cairo, Egypt. The Arabic banner reads "the hijab martyr".
Cairo: To Nabih Al Wahesh, a lawyer, the Egyptian foreign ministry has done very little to protect Egyptian expatriates.
Foreign Minister Ahmad Abu Al Gait should be sacked for failing to give enough care for Egyptians working and living abroad, said Al Wahesh, who has filed a petition to President Hosni Mubarak to dismiss Al Gait.
Official ties with other countries should come at the expense of Egyptians dignity and safety.
Al Wahesh is one of many Egyptians who were outraged by what they described as the Egyptian government's laxity in response to the slaying of an Egyptian woman in Germany on July 1.
Marwa Al Sherbini, 31, was stabbed 18 times as she was about to give evidence against her killer in an appeal case in Dresden, Germany.
Her husband, Elwi Okaz, who was also stabbed, is in a critical condition after shot by a police officer as he tried to defend his wife, who was three months pregnant with her second child.
Marwa's assailant, a German of a Russian descent, had earlier been fined 750 euros for insulting her at a playground in 2008.
She had filed charges against him after he branded her as a terrorist apparently for wearing the hijab (a headscarf).
The incident triggered a wave of angry protests in Egypt against perceived Islamophobia in Germany and brought the Egyptian authorities under fire.
The local press described Marwa, a former national handball champion, as the martyr of the hijab and racism.
Egyptian officials starting from the foreign minister and the Egyptian ambassador in Germany should have unequivocally condemned the incident as an act of terror instead of playing it down by describing the attacker as a racist, said Abdul Moneim Al Mashat, a political science professor at Cairo University.
Had the victim been a Jew or an Israeli, the whole Germany would have hurried to regret the attack and offer appropriate compensation, Al Mashat told Gulf News.
Egypt's Chief Prosecutor Abdul Majid Mahmoud has sent a senior aide to Germany this week to follow up on the investigations into the murder as Germany said Chancellor Angela Merkel would discuss the incident with President Mubarak during their presence in the current conference of the Group of Eight in Italy.
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