Egyptian security officials at the Cairo Airport barred entry, Friday, to the respected Palestinian journalist Daoud Kuttab. Kuttab, who regularly travels to Egypt, was attending a US-Egyptian workshop, under the patronage of the Egyptian Evangelical denomination presidency dealing with transparency in Christian institutions in Egypt.

Kuttab says he arrived at the Cairo airport from Amman at 9:15 pm Friday. “I was met with a person with a sign in my name inside the airport. We went together to the passport control, as I have so many times in the past, and my passport was stamped for entry. But within a second the passport official changed his mind, possibly seeing something on screen, and asked me to wait.”

Thirty minutes later Kuttab was taken to a security officer who asked about his profession and the reason for the visit. “I said that I am a journalist but that I was not coming for journalistic work but to attend a workshop of transparency,” Kuttab also told the Egyptian officer that he is returning to Amman at the end of the two-day workshop.

The security official contacted the conference organizers twice, Kuttab would later from the conference organizer.  “At one am after more than four hours a decision appears to have been taken. “The Egyptian police was asked to escort me and I thought I was going to be allowed to enter. But instead I was taken to a waiting room and told that I am officially not allowed entry by order of the Egyptian national security. I was given a chance to take a few hours of sleep in a room full of bunk beds and people sleeping, pending the return flight to Amman the next morning.

Kuttab who returned to Amman Saturday and was asked by Jordanian officials the reason for his return couldn’t provide any answer. “I told them I don’t know the reason. I go to Egypt often, the latest of which was a few months ago, and this has never happened to me. I will be officially asking Palestinians to find out, since the deportation document stated that I am Palestinian, holding a Jordanian travel passport. I want to resolve this problem so I can visit Egypt again as in the past.”

Daoud Kuttab is the deputy chair of the International Press Institute and the director of Community Media Network in Amman. He is a reporter with the Saudi daily Arab News and a columnist with the Washington DC based Al Monitor. He has writes for major world publications including Washington Post and Canada’s Globe and Mail among many other media outlets.