Amal Clooney had put together a report on Egypt’s brutally politicized judiciary that recommended major changes in the way it operated. The report chronicled the history of the courts under the three regimes following the overthrowing of President Hosni Mubarak in February 2011. The report showed that the judiciary jailed people on trumped-up charges for “insulting the military,” “insulting the president” or “insulting Islam.”

As a result of the report, Egyptian authorities told Ms. Clooney, then still Miss Alamuddin, that if she went to Cairo to launch the report she would be arrested. She told Britain’s “Guardian” that the warning had stopped her going ahead with a Cairo Launch for the February 2014 report for the International Bar Association. She did not detail the source of the warning.

“When I went to launch the report, first of all they stopped us from doing it in Cairo,” said Ms. Clooney speaking with Guardian. “They said: ‘Does the report criticize the army, the judiciary, or the government? We said: ‘Well, yes.’ They said: ‘Well then, you’re risking arrest.'”

Egyptian Interior Ministry Spokesman Hani Abdel Latif told AFP that Egypt had nothing against her. “She should say exactly who said that,” said Mr. Latif. “Why not specify from the start who told her that?”

Ms. Clooney is now on the defence team for Egyptian-Canadian Mohamed Fahmy, one of three convicted Al-Jazeera journalists. She said that she had little confidence in the retrial ordered by Egypt’s top court on Thursday and was instead lobbying for Mr. Fahmy to be deported under new powers decreed by Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in November.