On the 10th anniversary of the arrival of Field Marshal Abdel Fattah el-Sisi to power in Egypt, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) unveils the portraits and profiles of 16 of at least 18 journalists currently imprisoned in the country and reiterates its call for their immediate and unconditional release.
Only six of these 18 journalists have been tried and convicted. All of the others are detained provisionally and some have been held for much more than Egypt’s five-year legal limit on provisional detention. Most are accused of “disseminating false news,” “membership of a terrorist or banned organisation” or “endangering state security.” In reality, all were arrested because of their articles, reporting or journalistic work, or for defending their fellow journalists and the practice of journalism.
“The long list of imprisoned journalists tallied by RSF is an important reminder of the reality of President Sisi’s ten-year-old reign. These journalists have no place in prison. We demand their immediate and unconditional release.”
These prisoners include such emblematic figures from the 2011 revolution as Alaa Abdel Fattah and Mohamed Ibrahim Radwan, who is better known by his blog name, Mohamed Oxygen. After being released conditionally for several months, both were returned to prison, where they have been subjected to extremely harsh conditions. The latter tried to kill himself, while the former almost died when he went on hunger strike to denounce the conditions in which he is being held.
Several of these journalists are suffering from a lack of medical care in prison. They include Alia Awad, a photojournalist who was arrested in 2017 for posting a speech by a banned organisation. Sentenced to 15 years in prison in a mass trial, she is one of the three women journalists currently detained in Egypt.
Of the ten journalists working for the Qatari state-funded broadcaster Al Jazeera to be arrested in the past decade, two are still detained. They are Rabieh el-Sheikh and Bahaa el-Din Ibrahim. Al Jazeera journalists have been arrested repeatedly ever since Sisi seized power in 2013 and launched his witch-hunt against the Muslim Brotherhood, the party of Mohamed Morsi, the president he deposed.
The portraits of only 16 of the 18 currently detained journalist are unveiled below. The families of the other two said they would rather not publicise their cases at this time for fear of making their situation worse.
Ahmed MONTASIR, freelance business journalist
