May 27, 2017
The Egyptian Official Gazette today published a court decision to include a number of Egyptian citizens in the list of terrorist entities.
The decision included 15 journalists and media workers. Their charges according to decision was publishing false news about the situations in Egypt, although the court acquitted some of the journalists on the list of the charges against them and therefore it is no longer justified to include them on a terror list on charges that were acquitted of.
So, Arab Media Freedom Monitor “Ikshef” totally condemns this decision, which was not based on any legal basis, but was based on political rivalry, and punishing journalists and media workers for practicing their professional work in reporting events.
What highlights the lack of legal basis of the decision is that names of a number of these journalists and media workers had been included in a large list of terrorist entities that included 1500 citizens on January 17, including 28 journalists and media workers.
The new decision came in the context of a systematic crackdown on press freedom in Egypt that began since the coup d’état of July 3, 2013, the latest of which was the blocking of 21 online news websites. The inclusion of these journalists in the list of terror entities deprives them of the right to travel abroad, withdraws their passports and not allowing them to use their properties.
The list of journalists and media personalities included Walid Abdul-Raouf Shalabi (Freedom and Justice newspaper), Gamal Fathi Nassar (Al-Mokhtar Al-Islami magazine), Ahmad Subai (Afaq Arabiya newspaper), Khaled Hamza (Ikhwan Web website), Majdi Abdul-Latif (Akhbar Al Youm newspaper) ), Yusuf Talaat (Al-Shabab TV channel), Hani Salahuddin (Youm7 website), Ibrahim Al-Taher (Akhbar Al-Youm), Mosaad Al-Barbary (Misr 25 TV channel), Abdo Mostafa Desouki (Ikhwan Web website), Ahmed Mahmoud Abdul-Hafez (TV producer), Mohammed Al-Sanhawi (freelance journalist), Samhi Mostafa (Rassd news network), Mohammed Mostafa Al-Adli (Amjad TV channel) And Abdullah Al-Fakharani (Rassd news network).
The decision of the court was based on the indictment in the case, known as Rabaa Operations’ Chamber, in which the Criminal Court issued its final ruling on May 8, and acquitted some of the journalists and media workers whose names were included in the new list. They were Ahmad Subai, Hani Salahuddin, Mosaad Al-Barbary, Walid Shalabi and Abdo Mostafa.
According to the latest decision, the media workers in the list “intentionally broadcast abroad news, statements and false rumors about the internal situations of the country by broadcasting through the international information network (internet) and some satellite channels videos, pictures and false news to suggest to the foreign public opinion that the regime is incapable of running the country’s affairs. And this would weaken the prestige and status of the state.”
