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The Egyptian exile community in Berlin has received with little surprise the revelation that an official from the German government's press office worked for the spy services of the Arab country. Since the coup d'état carried out seven years ago by current President Abdelfatah al Sisi, the Egyptian embassy in Berlin has focused the denunciations and fears of the Egyptians who have found refuge in Germany on the brutal repression of the regime.

"It comes as no surprise to all of us, I don't even think it is to German security. Now he is a mole who worked for the German government but has ignored for years the fact that the Egyptian security services attacked us in German soil, " Ahmed Said , a five-year-old human rights activist based in Germany, was arrested during a visit to his native country. After his arrest, he was tortured and sentenced to two years behind bars . He received a presidential pardon and in late 2016 returned to Berlin.

Said's life history is not an exceptional case among Egyptians living in Germany. A diverse community of Egyptians has resided since the 2013 riot in the European country, fleeing a perpetual campaign of repression that has sent more than 60,000 dissidents to prison , including politicians, journalists, lawyers and artists; stifled all public liberties; and sentenced to death thousands of souls in macro-trials whose lack of guarantees are denounced by human rights organizations.

The scandal over the presence of a paid spy from Cairo in the press office of Chancellor Angela Merkel emerged this Thursday in the annual report of the German internal intelligence agency. The case, discovered in December, is under investigation in the German Federal Prosecutor's Office . As stated on Friday by the spokeswoman for the German government, the official in question - who is not known if he also had Egyptian nationality - did not have access to sensitive information .

The data at their fingertips, insist from the chancellery, are related to a program that allows each German deputy to annually invite fifty residents of his constituency and in no case, he says, could he have data on the accreditation of journalists. The purpose would have been Egyptian reporters based in the country . The official, with a middle position in the government spokesman's office, contacted two Egyptian agencies, the General Foreign Intelligence Service (GIS) and the Interior National Security Service (NSS).

The report also admits that "there are signs that the Egyptian secret services are trying to recruit Egyptians residing in Germany for intelligence purposes through their visits to Egyptian diplomatic missions in Germany and their trips to Egypt." The objective is to gather information about members of the opposition - among them, militants of the Muslim Brotherhood, the lighthouse organization of political Islam outlawed in Egypt but totally legal in the West, as well as liberals or leftists - or the Coptic Christian minority , victim of the extremist violence and government lack of protection.

AN OMNIPRESENT EGYPTIAN EMBASSY IN BERLIN

"It comes as no surprise to someone working on the political or activism scene," admits in conversation with this newspaper Egyptian Muhammad al Kashef , a lawyer and researcher with Watch The Med Alarm Phone, a network of activists from Europe and northern Europe. Africa. "The surveillance by the Egyptian intelligence services in Berlin is very obvious. In any event that we organize, we meet with people from the embassy to investigate and listen to what we say. On one occasion we discovered an infiltrator who admitted to working for the State Egyptian, "replies Al Kashef, also based in Berlin.

The Egyptian diplomatic legation in Germany has been in the eye of the hurricane for years. According to MadaMasr, the latest independent Egyptian newspaper to resist ubiquitous censorship, the Egyptian community in Berlin has repeatedly denounced that the embassy has closely monitored its members and reported their activities to Cairo. Several Egyptians from Germany have been detained upon arrival at airports in the Arab country. Among them is the investigator and journalist Ismail al Iskandarani, sentenced to a decade in prison in 2018 by a military court charged with spreading alleged false news about the Egyptian Sinai peninsula. Until the end of 2019 the Egyptian ambassador in Berlin was Badr Abdel Aty, who had previously been a spokesman for the Egyptian Foreign Ministry.

"As an Egyptian activist based in Berlin, I have witnessed Egyptian security surveillance and its direct and obvious intervention. And we have talked about this for years, especially after the security agreement between the two governments that includes the training of Egyptian agents. and security cooperation, "regrets Said. " The Egyptian embassy in Germany functions primarily as an agency of the secret services . Three years ago they doubled their staff and, beyond official informants, have recruited Egyptians and non-Egyptians to write reports on activists and their movements," he adds. .

"Many Egyptians in the community consider it a proven truth and avoid appearing in political acts to maintain the possibility of traveling to Egypt without risking being kidnapped, tortured or locked up in a jail," Said alleges. "This revelation is an opportunity to make clear the complicity of the German Government with the dirty Egyptian regime and to say that all of Europe is a partner in crime with the Cairo regime as well as a sponsor of the dictatorship," he concludes.

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