Egyptian elites evaded British law through claims of European citizenship and consular asylum

Evidence

Unfortunately for Alï Pasha, Cromer did not agree with this line of reasoning, and ordered the Slave Trade Bureau to be doubly vigilant for illicitly purchased slaves. One can only imagine the expression on Cromer's face when he learned from Schaefer Bey head of the bureau, that an informant had alerted his office to Shaghlüb's activities in Kerdessa and that the bureau had traced all six slave women, two of whom had been discovered in the spacious Cairo villa of none other than Alï Pasha himself. Three of the four purchasers were immediately arrested and jailed along with the Bedouin traders, and their trial was set for early September, to be conducted in a military tribunal and presided over by a British magistrate. `Alï Pasha, however, escaped arrest by claiming Italian citizenship and seeking asylum in the Italian consulate. — Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Colonialism_…, 48

Categorization

• XREF: Consular protection and capitulations law — links to Egypt’s semi-colonial legal structure compared with Sudan; echoes of broader African coloniality reading