CAIRO: Egyptian authorities on Sunday banned Yemeni rights activist and Nobel Peace Prize winner Tawakkol Karman from entering the country for “security reasons,” airport officials told AFP.
Karman was held at Cairo airport on arrival and ordered to return on the flight back to Yemen, the officials said without providing further details.
The first Arab woman to win the Nobel peace prize has voiced support for loyalists of deposed president Muhammad Mursi and described his ouster by the military in July as undemocratic.
Mursi supporters said in a statement that Karman had been due to make an appearance at a Cairo sit-in where backers of the deposed president have rallied for more than a month. The Anti-Coup Alliance said Vice President Mohamed ElBaradei, also a Nobel laureate, “is to be held responsible for banning activists and Nobel Prize winners from entering Egypt.”
They condemned the move as a violation of human rights and freedom of speech, which they say is evidence of the “police/military state” in Egypt.
Karman was a leading figure during the 2011 youth uprising in Yemen that eventually forced out veteran president Ali Abdullah Saleh, is the first Arab woman to win the Nobel peace prize.
Nobel laureate Karman banned from entering Egypt
