A high-profile Al Jazeera journalist arrested in Berlin at the request of Egypt said he expected to soon face a judge who would decide whether to extradite him, in a case that could embarrass Germany. Ahmed Mansour, a leading talk show host on the Qatari channel's Arabic service, was arrested at a Berlin airport on Saturday, the latest Al Jazeera journalist to be pursued by the Egyptian authorities. Egypt accuses Al Jazeera of being a mouthpiece of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Qatar-backed Islamist movement that President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi removed from power in 2013 when he was army chief and calls a terrorist group. Both the television channel and the Brotherhood reject the allegations made by Egyptian authorities. Mansour told Al Jazeera by telephone: "The German authorities told me that we are dealing with an international criminal case" and a judge would decide whether he should be extradited to Egypt. A Cairo court sentenced Mansour, who has dual Egyptian and British citizenship, to 15 years in prison in absentia last year on a charge of torturing a lawyer in 2011 in Tahrir Square, the focus of the uprising that toppled veteran autocrat Hosni Mubarak. Jazeera said at the time the charge was false and an attempt to silence Mansour, known to viewers across the Arab world. Saad Djebbar, a lawyer for Al Jazeera, said Mansour was arrested on Saturday as he tried to board a Qatar Airways flight to Doha. Egyptian Foreign Ministry spokesman Badr Abdelatty said Cairo was liaising with the German authorities. "He is accused of a crime and was sentenced so of course we have called for him to be returned," he told Reuters.
