Egypt: Charges against Mada Masr’s Editor-in-Chief Lina Attalah must be dropped

In Egypt /Road Map Program, Statements and Position Papers by CIHRS

The undersigned organizations call for the dismissal of the charges against Lina Atallah, editor-in-chief of the Mada Masr news website, who was detained on Sunday afternoon while she was in the area designated for citizens outside the Tora Prison complex, in the company of Dr. Laila Soueif. The Maadi prosecution interrogated Atallah, and accused her of taking photos of a military facility (Tora prison) without a permit. Soueif, the mother of imprisoned activist Alaa Abd El Fattah, was trying to bring in medicines and antiseptics to her son, who has been on hunger strike for more than a month, to protest his remand detention without crime or evidence.

Lina Atallah was performing her job as a journalist, as she was conducting an interview with Laila Soueif in the area designated for families waiting to visit their imprisoned sons. Soueif was hoping that the prison officials would respect the law and allow her to bring in the medicines and antiseptics to her son. Suddenly security officers ordered the families to leave, and surrounded Soueif and Atallah with barricades, before arresting the latter and transferring her to the Maadi police station, without allowing her to inform her family or her lawyer as stipulated by the law, and without legal ground.

It is as if the Ministry of Interior decided to hide the scandal of disregarding the law, with a larger scandal, which is the arrest of a journalist without a crime or a legal ground.

It is noteworthy that Atallah and three journalists from Mada Masr were detained for several hours last November after the security forces raided the website’s headquarters. The prosecution did not conduct an investigation into the incident, and none of the officers were held accountable for the raid.

The undersigned independent human rights organizations strongly condemn the arrest of the professional journalist Atallah, the editor-in-chief of the most prominent Egyptian news website. They call upon the attorney general to exercise his authority and drop all charges against Atallah immediately.

Signatories

  1. Arabic Network for Human Rights Information
  2. Association for Freedom of Thought and Expression (AFTE)
  3. Belady Center for Rights and Freedoms
  4. Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies
  5. Committee for Justice
  6. El Nadim Center
  7. Egyptian Commission for Rights and Freedoms
  8. Egyptian Front for Human Rights
  9. Masaar Community for Technology and Law

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