Syria detains Egyptian fighter who called for uprising against Sisi
Syrian authorities on Tuesday detained Egyptian fighter Ahmed al-Mansour days after he declared a new movement seeking to topple President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.
Mansour had previously joined Syrian rebels in their fight against Bashar al-Assad until his overthrow last month.
After fighters led by Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) captured Damascus on 8 December, Mansour began churning out videos on social media with the hashtag "It's your turn, Dictator", calling on Egyptians to unite to topple the Egyptian president after his 12 years of authoritarian rule.
Egyptian media has since been waging a campaign against him, describing him as a "terrorist" and calling on Syrian authorities to silence and extradite him.
On Tuesday, a social media account claiming to represent Mansour's movement declared that he was detained and held incommunicado by the new minister of defence, who had been Mansour's commander during the operation to liberate Damascus.
On Wednesday, the news was confirmed by Reuters, citing a Syrian interior ministry source.
It remains unclear what Mansour's fate will be.
Abdul Rahman Yusuf al-Qaradawi, an Egyptian poet and dissident, was detained in Lebanon earlier this month and extradited to the United Arab Emirates after posting online videos from Damascus suggesting Sisi will face Assad's fate and criticising UAE rulers for their alleged support for counter revolutions.
Sisi, an ex-army chief who came to power in 2013 after staging a coup against Egypt's first democratically elected president, Mohamed Morsi, is accused of overseeing the country's worst crackdown on human rights in recent history. His government has also come under criticism for its failure to address a worsening economic crisis, overspending on megaprojects that have little economic value and over-reliance on foreign aid.
Following Assad's ouster, which the Egyptian government initially decried, Cairo reportedly began compiling lists of Egyptians who had decided to go and fight in Syria after the start of the uprising.
Saudi state media, citing Egyptian sources, reported that some of the individuals on the lists were reportedly involved in terrorist activities in Egypt before leaving for Syria.
Mansour, who has since left the rebel group HTS, has ridiculed the Egyptian government's actions, claiming Sisi was "afraid."
"Sisi has been compiling a list of Egyptians fighting in Syria. I have something to say to him. You're stupid. You're afraid," a defiant Mansour said in a video on Monday.
Following the video's release, Egyptian authorities arrested several members of Mansour's immediate family, including his father and uncle. But on Tuesday, Mansour's father was featured in state-aligned media condemning his son's actions and accusing him of being a liar.
In his social media posts, Mansour called on the Egyptian opposition to rally around four key demands: Sisi's resignation, the removal of the Egyptian army from politics, the release of all political prisoners and a return to the principles of the January 2011 revolution.
A source close to Mansour previously told Middle East Eye that despite the Egyptian government's attempts to smear the former foreign fighter as a terrorist, Mansour's decision to actually head to the trenches was determined by Sisi's coup and subsequent brutal crackdown.
He said Mansour, who was born in Alexandria Governorate, was university-educated, having studied at Al-Azhar and attended the Naval Academy where he specialised in logistics.
The source said Mansour would go on to study at the Institute for the Preparation of Preachers and give Islamic lectures on Egyptian TV.
He noted Mansour underwent changes following the 2010 police torture and killing of Khaled Said. The source said that Mansour had no relations with the Muslim Brotherhood or any political party after Hosni Mubarak's ouster, and that the Rabaa al-Adawiya massacre proved a pivotal turning point.
"Mansour took part in the Rabaa sit-in and witnessed numerous massacres by the military regime," the source said.
Within two months, he left Egypt for Syria to join the fight against the Assad government, the source added.
The anxiety surrounding developments in Syria has resulted in increased security measures taken by Egyptian authorities towards Syrians, mostly refugees, residing in Egypt.
In Cairo, when members of the Syrian community took to the streets to celebrate the fall of Assad, they were detained under the pretext of protesting without a permit.
Meanwhile, Egyptian authorities are reported to have told travel and airline companies operating in the country not to allow Syrian nationals to enter Egypt from anywhere in the world, except those holding temporary residency permits.