(Credit: AFP)
BEIRUT — Jordan’s Foreign Ministry has denied any role in the arbitrary detention of a Jordanian LGBTQ and refugee women's rights defender, identified by the pseudonym AOA for her safety. The person in question, who is a non-binary lesbian, was arrested on Tuesday in Beirut, just two days before they were set to leave Lebanon for Australia on a humanitarian visa.
Here’s what we know:
• Amnesty International Australia has called on Lebanese authorities to cooperate with the United Nations and with Australian authorities to secure AOA’s release. Amnesty International believes that AOA’s prominent family in Jordan is a factor in their detention, and that any return to the country would present a danger to their life.
• However, on Saturday, a spokesperson for the Jordanian Foreign Ministry denied that Jordan’s Embassy in Beirut had any role in the detention, stressing that it is not in the jurisdiction of any of Jordan’s diplomatic missions to arrest anyone. He added that the embassy was not trying to forcefully repatriate AOA and that it had not received any notice of their arrest in Lebanon.
• AOA escaped Jordan in July 2020, first fleeing to Turkey and then Lebanon.