Egypt charges six Matsda2sh journalists with terrorism-related offences
Prosecutors in Egypt charged six journalists from the fact-checking platform Matsda2sh with belonging to the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, their lawyer said.
Key facts
- Six Matsda2sh journalists were charged with belonging to the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, their lawyer Nabeh al-Ganadi said.
- Five were remanded in custody for 15 days and the sixth was still being interrogated, Ganadi said.
- The six were arrested in raids on their homes across Egypt on 28 and 29 September, according to the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR).
- Egypt's interior ministry confirmed the arrests and accused Matsda2sh of seeking to destabilise the country through disinformation.
- The EIPR said most of the journalists testified they were tortured; the interior ministry denied the allegations.
Prosecutors in Egypt have charged six journalists who work for the independent fact-checking platform Matsda2sh with belonging to the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, according to their lawyer, Nabeh al-Ganadi. Ganadi said on Monday that the men were accused of joining a terrorist group, funding terrorism, publishing "fake news" and using social media to call for acts of terrorism. Matsda2sh has denied the allegations. Ganadi later said the State Security Prosecution had remanded five of the six in custody for 15 days, and that the sixth was still being interrogated.
Security personnel arrested the six journalists — Abdullah Qadry, Mohammed Ashraf Abu Emeira, Islam Barakat, Omar Helal, Mohammed Mahmoud and Mohammed Adel — in raids on their homes across Egypt on 28 and 29 September, according to the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR), whose lawyers are defending them. The EIPR said no information was initially provided about where they were held or why. On Thursday, the interior ministry confirmed the arrests and accused Matsda2sh of seeking to destabilise the country through disinformation. It said the platform was unlicensed and operated from abroad, and that its founder, Abdel Rahman Mansour, was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Mansour told the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) that the accusations "misrepresent who we are and the work we do". "We have no affiliation with the Muslim Brotherhood, and the authorities know this," he said.
On Monday, the EIPR said most of the detained journalists had testified before the State Security Prosecution that they were "tortured at National Security Agency facilities in the days following their arrests, before being brought before any judicial authority". The journalists reported "beatings, forced stripping, electric shocks and threats to harm them or their families", it added. The interior ministry denied that they had been tortured or mistreated. A ministry source said the EIPR's allegations were "unfounded and come in the context of attempts to evade the charges levelled at them".
The CPJ called the detention of Matsda2sh's entire newsroom a "grave escalation in Egypt's campaign against independent journalism". It said Egypt remained one of the world's leading jailers of journalists, with 25 currently imprisoned or detained. The BBC reported that the arrests were condemned by international human rights and press freedom organisations.
Context
Matsda2sh, whose name means "Do Not Believe" in Arabic, was founded in 2018 to "resist the flow of false or misleading news", according to its website, and regularly fact-checks statements made by Egyptian officials and carries out investigative reporting in Egypt and other Arab countries. President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi has overseen what human rights groups say is an unprecedented crackdown on dissent since he led the military's overthrow of his predecessor, Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohammed Morsi, in 2013. Tens of thousands of people have been detained, mainly Muslim Brotherhood officials and supporters but also leading secular and liberal activists, media workers and academics.
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