Mohamed El Ghanem

Dr. El Ghanem is a Professor of International law, having received his PhD from the University of Rome. Dr. El Ghanem authored a 1991 book on "Terrorism and the Law". As an Egyptian government official, he drafted much of the country's anti-terrorism legislation.[1]

Prior to seeking asylum in Switzerland, El Ghanem was an Egyptian Government official, a Director in the Ministry of Interior, who also taught law at the police academy in Cairo. In the late 1990s, El Ghanem had differences with Egyptian government, because he refused to fabricate false charges against journalists and other dissidents.[2] He subsequently became the target of persecution himself for contesting the persecution of others, at which point he sought asylum first in Italy, then in Switzerland.[3]

Before he left Egypt, Dr. El Ghanem was well known for defending the rights of Egyptian Christians (Copts) who were at the time suffering under the church-building ban of President Hosni Mubarek. According to journalist Robert Fisk, Dr. El Ghanem's defense of Christian Copts made him a "thorn in the side of the Mubarek regime".[4]

In 2000, Dr. El Ghanem fled Egypt in the plane of Swiss Foreign Minister Joseph Deiss.

In 2001, Dr. El Ghanem received refugee status from the Swiss government.

Dr. El Ghanem came to Switzerland seeking asylum and refuge, and according to journalist Robert Fisk, "found himself in an equally dangerous game"[5]

In 2002, Dr. El Ghanem claims Swiss secret services began aggressively recruiting him as an informant[6] to spy on prominent local Muslim community figures, notably Geneva imam Hani Ramadan.[7] At the time, a large-scale operation of spying on the Geneva-based imam called "Operation Memphis" was in-play.[8] To the chagrin of the Swiss security services, Dr. El Ghanem refused to collaborate as an informant. As a result of his refusal, he claimed to have received severe harassment and threats by the same Swiss secret service officials.[9] In response, Dr. El Ghanem filed charges against the Geneva police for the harassment. Dr. El Ghanem then claims he was menaced to remove the harassment charges he had filed.

The harassment continued repeatedly and without pause. Dr. El Ghanem alleged that informants were being used in the harassment, most of them migrants.

In 2003, Dr. El Ghanem called journalist Robert Fisk in Beirut and told him of the threats and harassment he'd received from the Swiss secret services.[10][11] Robert Fisk knew Dr. El Ghanem from Egypt; had previously written articles about his Egyptian government persecution.

In 2005, Dr. El Ghanem was seated in the restaurant-cafeteria of the University of Geneva, where he was studying to gain equivalence of his law degree from the University of Rome. Dr. El Ghanem was allegedly attacked by a Somali migrant;[12] Dr. El Ghanem claimed he waved a butter knife at the migrant to ward him away. Police suddenly appeared and rather than defending Dr. El Ghanem, Geneva Police arrested him, claiming he had attacked the migrant with the knife.[13] Subsequent to this, Dr. El Ghanem was arrested and held without charge, for several weeks. Written reports of the Geneva Police claim that Dr. El Ghanem had attacked and "placed a knife in the abdomen" of the migrant. Years later, the Geneva Police officer in charge of the case would admit fault with his own official Police report.

In 2005, subsequent to these events, Dr. El Ghanem wrote several senior Swiss officials saying that the case would have "consequences". Dr. El Ghanem was detained on the basis of these letters, but also on official allegations that he had published angry comments online, which wound-up on jihadic websites, inciting violence against Switzerland. Dr. El Ghanem's involvement in any such publication has never been formally proven nor publicly substantiated.[14] The family of Dr. El Ghanem disputes these claims, stating he had no ties to extremist groups,[15] that he sought only protection, and that Dr. El Ghanem was peacefully studying at the University of Geneva to obtain Swiss recognition of his law degree from the University of Rome when the Swiss harassment started.[16]

Dr. El Ghanem's allegations of official harassment were never examined by Geneva Judiciary. Instead, the court judged Dr. El Ghanem criminally irresponsible (mentally unfit and criminally dangerous) vis-a-vis the interaction with the Somali migrant, charges which were later determined to be false.[17] This court decision taken by the Geneva Judiciary was not only based on ill-founded charges, but it was run in absentia, using a medical assessment of a doctor who had never seen Dr. El Ghanem in person,[18] i.e. the medical doctor had only read the allegations of the Geneva judicial police, many of which were later refuted by the police themselves.[19]

In 2006, the Swiss Federal Council cancelled Dr. El Ghanem's refugee status and expelled him from Switzerland,[20] on the grounds that Dr. El Ghanem was a threat to the external and internal security of the country.[21] The removal of Dr. El Ghanem's refugee status and his expulsion from Switzerland were performed administratively: without a hearing, and without the right to appeal.[22]

As a result, Dr. El Ghanem, who had been learning French and studying law to pass the Swiss bar exam, was removed from his housing, and found found his state support as a refugee arbitrarily curtailed; he was left without housing or means of sustenance.[23]

• THE INDEPENDENT: Robert Fisk’s World: The curious case of the missing Egyptian and the Swiss police, The Independent, 29 August 2009
• THE INDEPENDENT: Robert Fisk’s World: Jailed in Geneva: The Colonel Who Stood up to Mubarek but Refused to Spy for the Swiss, Robert Fisk, The Independent, March 5, 2012
• LEMAN BLUE (Swiss Television) Discussion of El Ghanem Case
• Interview with Brother of Dr. El Ghanem (Part in English, part in French)

• Forced disappearance
• Indefinite detention
• Switzerland
• Geneva
• Coercion

• OHCHR - Official site
• UN Committee on Enforced Disappearances
• UN Declaration on the Right and Responsibility of Individuals, Groups and Organs of Society to Promote and Protect Universally Recognized Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms
• Who is a defender (OHCHR)
• International Service for Human Rights: Working to support Human Rights Defenders
• Amnesty International: Protecting Human Rights Defenders
• Front Line: The International Foundation for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders at Risk
• International Federation for Human Rights - Human rights defenders programme of FIDH
• The Human rights defenders programme of the OMCT