A photo circulated online of Abdul Rahman Yusuf during his visit to Damascus, standing in the square outside of the Umayyad Mosque in mid December, 2024.
The Lebanese government announced its decision to extradite Egyptian activist and poet Abdul Rahman Yusuf al-Qaradawi on Tuesday, going against the wishes and warnings of many ulama (religious scholars), jurists and representatives of national and international NGOs.
Yusuf, son of late Sheikh Yussef Qaradawi, a prominent Egyptian scholar and sheikh who influenced the intellectual leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood, is the subject of two extradition requests from Egyptian and Emirati authorities, issued in response to a video Yusuf posted in which he insinuates further toppling of regional authorities in the wake of Assad's fall. He will be sent to the United Arab Emirates, according to an official statement released by the Cabinet following its Tuesday session. The date of his extradition was not given. Yusuf has Turkish citizenship.
Earlier in the day, a sit-in was held outside the Palace of Justice in solidarity with the Yusuf, who was arrested on Dec. 28 at Masnaa, a border crossing between Syria and Lebanon. He was returning from a visit to Damascus, during which he had published a video taken on the square outside the Umayyad Mosque to celebrate “the victory of the Syrian revolution against the tyrant Bashar al-Assad.”
"Rest assured the victory is imminent, in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Yemen, and all countries that revolted against injustice and tyranny," he says in the video.
“We ask God to enable the Syrian people and new leadership to face all the evil challenges set up by the plotters, especially the Arab Zionist regimes,” he says, referring to "Egypt, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia."
The Egyptian activist's father was sentenced in absentia by the Egyptian courts and died in Qatar in 2022. The younger Qaradawi is also a critic of the Egyptian government, which in 2013 overthrew former president Mohammad Morsi, a product of the Muslim Brotherhood, in which his father was a significant figure. Lebanese authorities detained Yusuf on the basis of an arrest warrant issued by the Council of Arab Interior Ministers, following a conviction handed down in 2017 by the Egyptian judiciary, for “inciting violence and disseminating false information.”
'We have to rebuild the country'
The UAE's request for Yusuf's extradition came after he had already been arrested by Lebanese authorities, and the UAE's accusations of alleged incitement to disturb public order were used as the basis for the Cassation Prosecutor's Office's order for Yusuf's continued detention on Jan. 3.
It was up to the Council of Ministers, not the judiciary, to decide, following the examination of a report accompanied by legal recommendations prepared by the Attorney General at the Court of Cassation, Jamal Hajjar.
Yusuf's lawyer, Mohammad Sablouh, told L'Orient-Le Jour earlier on Tuesday that when he contacted the office of the Council of Ministers to try to prevent the government from deporting him, an official from the office replied: “We have to rebuild the country.”
Sablouh interpreted this as a reference to the UAE aid on which the Lebanese authorities are counting after the destruction caused by the war with Israel, although the office of the Council of Ministers did not respond to requests for clarification.
During the sit-in, the lawyer questioned the speed of judicial proceedings in his client's case, pointing out that “Attorney General Jamal Hajjar was exceptionally present at his office on Friday, a day on which he is not normally on duty at the Palace of Justice.” The lawyer drew a comparison with the release on Jan. 2 of Rifaat al-Assad's granddaughter and her mother, “three days after their arrest,” at the Beirut airport for using false passports.
Speaking during the protest, lawyer Hala Hamzeh highlighted a convention between Lebanon and Arab countries, including Egypt, according to which “an individual cannot be extradited for his political opinions.”
“The Egyptian judgment is time-barred by the five-year deadline [2022]”, she told the crowd, referring to a convention to which Lebanon is a signatory, which stipulates "the prohibition of extraditing a detainee to a country where he risks being tortured."
Amnesty International's Deputy Director for the Middle East and North Africa, Sara Hashash released a statement on Tuesday warning that Yusuf "would be at real risk of enforced disappearance, torture and other ill-treatment, and unfair trial leading to prolonged unjust imprisonment [and] he would also be at risk of arbitrary detention and other human rights violations if he is returned to the UAE."
Sheikh Sami Khatib, an ulama representing the Islamic Committees, urged the government “not to compromise itself for political reasons.” The activist should especially not be extradited to the UAE, Khatib argued, since he is not an Emirati citizen. He asked that Yusuf be handed over to Turkey, which had made a request to this effect shortly after his arrest. Yusuf's lawyer said that the Turkish ambassador had met the head of the outgoing government, Najib Mikati, last Wednesday to discuss the matter.
At the close of the sit-in on Tuesday afternoon, demonstrators issued a statement announcing that, in the event of extradition, they would take the Lebanese officials “to the European courts” for “violation of international conventions and treaties, in particular those relating to the fight against torture.”