Jazeera says Germany releases correspondent

Germany released on June 22 Al-Jazeera correspondent Ahmed Mansour who was arrested on the weekend at the request of his native Egypt, the Doha-based channel said.

"We welcome this decision by the German prosecutor," said Al-Jazeera spokesman Hareth Adlouni, adding that the prosecutor had dropped all charges against Mansour.
 
The 52-year-old journalist was arrested Saturday at a Berlin airport, with a spokesman for the German prosecution service saying he was detained "on the basis of a national Egyptian arrest warrant".
 
Al-Jazeera said an Egyptian court sentenced Mansour in absentia in 2014 to 15 years in prison, for "torturing a lawyer in 2011 on Tahrir Square", the Cairo epicentre of protests that brought down president Hosni Mubarak.
 
"Mansour has rejected these absurd accusations," the network said.
 
Mansour, who hosts a popular news interview programme, recently interviewed Abu Mohamed al-Jolani, the chief of Al-Qaeda's Syria affiliate, Al-Nusra Front.
 
Ties between Doha and Cairo have been extremely strained over Qatar's backing for the former, short-lived Egyptian government under the Muslim Brotherhood.