Profile: Fleeing Ayman Nour continues to be contentious

CAIRO – 24 January 2018: The Egyptian Syndicate of Journalists on Tuesday dropped the membership of Ayman Nour for his failure to pay off the subscription financial dues.

Egyptian dissident politician Ayman Nour, owner and manager of Al-Sharq TV, was accused by the channel’s staff and general assembly of “robbing” their financial dues and concealing the channel’s budget.

The channel’s staff created a Facebook page to publicly spread their demands as the foundation slowly tumbles while exposing itself, along with the people behind it.

The channel’s board of directors issued a statement on Jan. 15 saying the channel’s staff did not demand anything but justice, human dignity and a professional administration that helps smooth the path for opposing the regime.

Here is what you need to know about the all-time contentious Ayman Nour.

Nour is an Egyptian lawyer and politician, and he was one of the 2012 presidential election candidates.

He was publicly known for his liberal views and being a dissident to the regime of toppled President Mohamed Hosni Mubarak.

Born on December 5, 1964, Nour received a diploma in international law and a master’s in philosophy of history.

Nour co-founded a lot of newspapers, either local or regional. He also worked as a correspondent for the French radio in Cairo.

He was a member of the Wafd Party and left it in March 2001 shortly after the death of the party’s president, Fouad Serageldin, and then he joined the Egypt’s Party, where he was elected as president, and then he founded the Tomorrow Party in October 2004.

In 1995, Ayman Nour was the youngest member of the House of Representatives and was named best parliamentarian in 1999, and then he was re-elected a member of the parliament in 2005.

In the 2005 presidential election, Nour was a candidate and placed second. Afterwards he was accused of forgery and sentenced to 5 years in prison until he was released in 2009 for health reasons.

Nour submitted his nomination papers to run in the country’s 2012 presidential election, but was excluded due to legal reasons.

After the 2013 ouster of President Mohamed Morsi, Nour fled to Turkey, where he has been a fierce critic of President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi and the Egyptian military since.

In April 2017, a lawsuit to strip former presidential candidate Ayman Nour of his Egyptian citizenship was filed for operating a pro-Muslim Brotherhood satellite channel. The court has dropped the case in November 2017.