An American woman has been banned from entering Egypt after verbally attacking a visa agent at the Egyptian consulate in Aqaba, Jordan and insulting Egypt.
The Foreign Ministry took the move after a report from the consulate last week that the woman yelled expletives and insulted Egypt.
“Our operating procedure is to report to Cairo,” said a diplomatic source working Wednesday at the consulate. “When she yelled that, we thought it was unacceptable.”
The woman was accompanying her husband, who is a Libyan citizen, and she wanted him to receive a visa immediately. Egypt does grant visas to Libyans, but the procedure in Jordan is to send the application to the central office in Cairo who will then reply. The woman said she wanted the visa the same day and was enraged when informed this was not possible.
“She began shouting in the visa office,” said the source in Aqaba, “The husband was actually not banned. He repeatedly apologised to the visa officer in charge and was trying to calm her down.”
A free-travel zone, allowing citizens and tourists to move freely between Egypt, Libya and Tunisia, was settled upon by the foreign ministers of the three North African countries in the June signing of the Cairo Declaration. However, Jordan was not included in this agreement.
