Egyptian journalists are preparing to hold a fresh protest in Cairo this weekend after six of their colleagues were charged with terrorism offences amid allegations that they were tortured while in police detention.
The journalists, who work for the independent factchecking and investigative platform Matsadaash, were arrested by plainclothes officers last week at their homes and on the street. In a statement, the authorities accused them of operating without a licence and of producing false news on behalf of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood.
Those detained are Abdallah Qadri, Mohamed Ashraf Abu Emeira, Mohamed Adel, Islam Barakat, Mohamed Mahmoud and Omar Helal. One of the six was charged on Sunday, while the remaining five were charged late on Wednesday.
All six have told their lawyers that they were tortured and forced to record false confessions, allegations the police deny.
“We were horrified by the news of the torture of our six colleagues,” said Hadeer El-Mahdawy, a journalist on the protest’s organising committee.
In a statement issued on Wednesday evening, the public prosecution said three journalists who claimed ill-treatment had undergone forensic examinations that found no injuries or signs of violence.
Separately, another journalist, Rasha Azab, was questioned by the supreme state security prosecution over a social media post criticising the interior ministry in connection with the arrests. Azab has been released on bail and faces charges of using a website to promote ideas advocating terrorist crimes. Her lawyer, Mahienour El-Masry, said prosecutors confronted Azab with 11 identical complaints lodged in different governorates over the post.
Lobna Darwish, of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR), whose lawyers represent the six from Matsadaash, said the journalists had told prosecutors they were blindfolded and handcuffed for days, beaten and forcibly stripped. Some were given electric shocks, she said, while others described threats to harm members of their families.
Darwish added that the detainees were made to read purported confessions from sheets of paper in filmed sessions involving repeated takes in front of what she described as professional filming crews.
The interior ministry has denied the allegations of torture or ill-treatment, calling them baseless and an attempt by the detainees to evade the accusations against them. It described the six as Muslim Brotherhood elements working for the group.
Journalists say the arrests and alleged abuse form part of a broader escalation by the Egyptian authorities against independent media, set against poor pay and insecure employment across the profession.
“We are at a very difficult moment on every level,” El-Mahdawy said. “But it is very important that we declare our rejection of what is happening and use every tool we have to protect what remains of this profession, and to defend our colleagues and ourselves.”
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