Qaradawi, also a poet, was detained on Saturday as he arrived from Syria at the Masnaa border crossing, due to an Egyptian arrest warrant, the official says.
The warrant was “based on an Egyptian judiciary ruling” sentencing Qaradawi in absentia to five years in jail on charges of “opposing the state and inciting terrorism,” the official added.
His father was prominent Sunni scholar Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, which is outlawed in Egypt as a terror group. He died in 2022 after decades in exile in Qatar.
The judiciary will make a recommendation as to whether “the conditions are met for him to be extradited,” and the matter will be referred to the Lebanese government, which must make the final decision, the official says.
Then-Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh kisses the hand of Egyptian cleric and chairman of the International Union of Muslim Scholars Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, upon the latter’s arrival at Rafah Crossing in the southern Gaza Strip, May 8, 2013. (Said Khatib/AFP/File)
Qaradawi was a political organizer against the government of longtime Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak, who was toppled in 2011 in the Arab Spring uprising.
He later became a vocal opponent of current Egyptian leader Abdel Fattah al-Sissi who in 2013 overthrew elected president Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood.
A family friend tells AFP that Qaradawi holds Turkish citizenship and was returning from a visit to Syria, where rebels led by Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham toppled longtime Syrian ruler Bashar al-Assad on December 8.
Qaradawi had posted a video online taken at Damascus’s Umayyad mosque, celebrating Assad’s fall, expressing hope for “victory” in other Arab Spring countries, including Egypt and warning Syrians of “malicious regimes” in “the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt.”
