Five years in jail for lawyer

An EGYPTIAN lawyer whose arrest on drug smuggling charges in Saudi Arabia last year caused a diplomatic row between Riyadh and Cairo has been sentenced to five years in jail and 300 lashes.

The case has been closely watched by Egyptian activists, who said Ahmed al-Gezawi was arrested because of his work documenting what he described as the poor treatment of Egyptians working in Saudi Arabia, which Riyadh denies.

Nearly 1,000 people gathered outside the Saudi embassy in Cairo last April after Gezawi was detained on arrival at Jeddah airport, with some hurling shoes and shouting insults directed at the kingdom’s rulers.

Gezawi was charged with smuggling around 21,000 pills of the anti-anxiety drug Xanax into Saudi Arabia.

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