The authorities planned to deport Mr. Shafik, who has been living in the United Arab Emirates, back to Egypt, his lawyer said. He could face treason charges.
CAIRO — The United Arab Emirates arrested an Egyptian presidential candidate to deport him to Egypt, his lawyer said Saturday.
The reported detention of Ahmed Shafik is the strongest indication yet of the length that the United Arab Emirates is willing to go in order to protect President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt from any real challenge in his expected campaign for re-election next spring.
Mr. Shafik, a former Air Force general and a former prime minister, has lived in the United Arab Emirates since he narrowly lost Egypt’s only free presidential election, in 2012. He had said in recent days that he intended to run again but the United Arab Emirates had blocked him from travel.
Mr. Shafik now faces possible treason charges or other legal action in Egyptian courts.
After he announced his intention to run, several pro-government Egyptian television hosts denounced Mr. Shafik as a corrupt traitor. Private lawyers supportive of the government began filing legal actions against him.
Alerted by an ally of Mr. Shafik that he might be deported, The New York Times tried to reach him by phone on Saturday. In a brief interview, May Shafik, one of Mr. Shafik’s grown daughters, said that her father expected to fly to Paris that night.
“We are all fine,” she said. “We are just worried because, you know, nothing is guaranteed.”
But Ms. Shafik could not be reached after that, and others in contact with the family said Emirati security agents were already inside the family’s home during her interview with The Times.
A short time later, Mr. Shafik’s Egyptian lawyer, Dina Adly, issued a terse statement. “The Emirati authorities have arrested Lt. Gen. Shafik from his home in order to deport him to Egypt. We have lost contact with everyone,” Ms. Adly wrote on Facebook.
Mr. Shafik ran for president in 2012 as the candidate of Egypt’s business and military establishment, promising to restore order after the Arab Spring uprising of the previous year. He lost the election by about two percentage points to Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood, whom Mr. Sisi removed in a military takeover a year later.
Mr. Shafik fled to the United Arab Emirates after losing the election. When he left, prosecutors were investigating corruption charges related to his tenure as the minister of civil aviation, in charge of Egypt’s national airline and airports, a post he held for a decade beginning in 2001.
Mr. Sisi, then the defense minister, ran in a pro forma presidential election in 2014. In a leaked recording of a telephone call, Mr. Shafik said he would not run because the vote would be “a farce.”
“I know very well they will fix all the ballot boxes,” he said. “This is going to be a comedy show.”
Mr. Sisi was declared the winner with more than 97 percent of the vote in an election that observers said fell short of international standards .
