CAIRO
By Mahmoud al-Husseini
Authorities at Cairo International Airport on Wednesday stopped prominent Egyptian author and activist Abdel-Rahman Youssef from boarding a flight to New York, saying that he faced prosecution, an airport source said.
Youssef, 43, is the son of Youssef al-Qaradawi, a prominent Muslim preacher and head of the International Union for Muslim Scholars.
Without elaborating, the source said that Youssef had found his name on a travel-ban list due to his ostensible involvement in a lawsuit.
Following the incident, Youssef said on Twitter that he had been prevented from traveling to New York – where he had been scheduled to give lectures at several venues in the US – "for unknown reasons," adding that he would take legal action against the decision.
Youssef had supported the June 30 protests that led to the ouster of Mohamed Morsi, the country's first freely elected president. However, he has recently taken an active stance against Egypt's military-backed interim government and its heavy-handed crackdown on Morsi's supporters.
His father, who currently resides in Qatar, has also been a vocal critic of Morsi's ouster and Egypt's new military-backed rulers.
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