Detained Al-Jazeera journalist to remain in German custody

A prominent Al-Jazeera journalist will remain in German custody for a second night, prosecutors said today, saying they have not yet decided whether to extradite him to Egypt or set him free.
As dozens of supporters protested today in front of the Berlin court building where Ahmed Mansour was being held, his lawyer, Fazli Altin, called for the journalist's immediate release, saying that Germany was getting involved in a politically tainted case.
Mansour, 52, a well-known journalist with the Qatar-based broadcaster's Arabic service, was detained at Berlin's Tegel airport on Saturday on an Egyptian arrest warrant, his lawyers said. Mansour, who holds dual Egyptian-British nationality, was trying to board a Qatar Airways flight to Doha, the station reported.

A spokesman for the Berlin prosecutor's office today said that Mansour would be taken to a prison in the city and that further decisions on his future will be made next week.
Altin said a court would tomorrow most likely check out the lawfulness of his possible extradition to Egypt.
Mansour's detention is the latest in a long series of legal entanglements between Egypt and satellite news channels.
The station said he had been sentenced in absentia in Egypt to 15 years in prison over allegedly torturing an unnamed lawyer in Tahrir Square in 2011, a charge both he and the channel rejected.

Mansour's arrest is the result of "Egypt's terrible revenge against journalists that cross the regime," press freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders said in a statement Sunday, adding if Germany did extradite him "it will be putting itself at service of a dictatorial regime and will dishonor itself.