Op-ed review: Al-Sisi’s visit to Russia, travel ban, Khashoggi case

Amira El-Fekki
2 Min Read

President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi’s current visit to Russia was the subject of attention of Egyptian op-eds writers in Wednesday’s newspapers.

In state daily Al-Ahram, Salah Montasser’s piece titled “A punishment, we’re waiting for its abolishment,” referred to Russia’s continued ban on travels to Sharm El-Sheikh as a “weird stance,” given that it has been three years since the Metrojet terrorist attack, that Egypt has improved its airport security, and that the Russians went silent when its military plane was intentionally brought down over Syria.

Al-Ahram’s Farouk Goweida focused on the historic relations between the two countries, not only in terms of mutual cooperation and projects including the nuclear power plant, but as both understand each other’s strategic importance in the region where Russia is playing a big role.

For Al-Akhbar’s Karam Gabr, Al-Sisi’s visit comes amid a series of successful connections with economic powers.

On a different note, Hamdy Rizk published in Al-Akhbar an excerpt from a letter written by the daughter of the late general prosecutor Hisham Barakat, who was killed in a car bomb in 2015, in which she expressed relief at the arrest of Hisham Al-Ashmawi, a top wanted terrorist suspect, saying her father could now rest in peace.

Meanwhile, editor-in-chief of Al-Shorouk newspaper tackled the media perspective in the case of missing Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Emad El-Din Hussein argued that while media coverage should have maintained that Khashoggi disappeared after going into the Saudi consulate in Turkey, it instead became biased on both sides of the conflicts, a result of international and regional polarisation, he stated.

As for the privately-owned Al-Youm Al-Sabea’s Dandarawi Al-Hawari, the whole case is the work for intelligence services working on spreading chaos in the Saudi kingdom, and could be compared to the case of Khaled Said which sparked the Egyptian revolution – a bad example in the writer’s opinion.

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Journalist in DNE's politics section, focusing on human rights, laws and legislations, press freedom, among other local political issues.
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