REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, CAIRO -- The German authorities released on Monday well-known Egyptian Aljazeera journalist Ahmed Mansour who was arrested Saturday at Berlin airport at the request of Egypt, the pan-Arab Aljazeera TV reported.
The Egyptian prosecution sent a request to the German authorities on Sunday to extradite Mansour, but the German prosecutor decided his release instead.
Mansour was arrested at Berlin airport Saturday when he was on his way back to Qatar after recording a TV report on Germany's policy towards the Middle East and the recent visit of Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi to the Western country.
The Egyptian reporter, who has been working for long for the Doha-based Aljazeera, is known for his loyalty to the currently-blacklisted Muslim Brotherhood group of former Islamist President Mohamed Morsi, who was ousted by the military in July 2013 after mass protests against his one-year rule.
The man was sentenced in absentia last year to 15 years in prison over torturing a lawyer during the 2011 uprising that toppled former President Hosni Mubarak.
In a phone call to Aljazeera when he was detained at Berlin airport, Mansour expressed hope that he will be released "if the judge is convinced that the all the charges are fabricated," while his lawyer said charges against his client were "politically motivated."
Earlier this year, Egyptian authorities deported Aljazeera Canadian-Egyptian journalist Mohamed Fahmy after he gave up his Egyptian citizenship.
Fahmy and his two colleagues, Australian Peter Greste and Egyptian Baher Mohamed, were sentenced to 10 years in prison in June 2014 over charges of spying for Qatar's Aljazeera TV network, which has been supporting the Brotherhood group since Morsi's ouster.
Fahmy and Greste are now back in Canada and Australia while Mohamed was released pending a retrial.
Egyptian courts are currently holding mass trials for thousands of Morsi supporters.
Morsi himself, along with more than 100 others, has recently been handed an appealable death sentence over plotting a mass jailbreak during the 2011 anti-Mubarak uprising.
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