Reported by The Guardian
Warnings of escalating clampdown on press freedom come after Cairo court convicts Attalah of managing an unlicensed website
Lina Attalah, a prominent Egyptian journalist and the editor-in-chief of the news outlet Mada Masr, has been released from detention by Egypt’s authorities and had her website ordered to be shut down by a court amid an intensifying crackdown on independent media in the country.
Attalah was taken briefly into custody after a Cairo court convicted her of managing an unlicensed website, prompting fresh international concerns over press freedom in Egypt.
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According to Mada Masr, Attalah was released after the news outlet had paid a fine of 3m Egyptian pounds ($53,500; £40,100), prompting statements of support from global human rights groups.
“Lina Attalah was released after we paid the said fine,” said her lawyer Hassan al-Azhari. “In the process, we discovered that she had been sentenced in absentia in 2024 to a year in prison, as well as a fine of 20,000 Egyptian pounds,” he told AFP.
Attalah’s defence team had appealed that sentence, and a new court hearing was scheduled for 11 November, Azhari added.
Attalah founded Mada Masr in 2013, after coming to international prominence in 2011 during the Arab spring. An advocate for press freedom, she has been arrested on a number of occasions.
Attalah’s detention, and the ordered closure of Mada Masr – which says it had applied for a licence to operate three years ago and had no reply from Egyptian authorities – follows the arrest of the entire six-person team at the independent factchecking platform Matsadaash, who were charged with belonging to the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood.
Attalah’s legal team suggested she had been, in effect, ambushed during a court appearance, with a judge appointing a defence lawyer for her before security personnel detained her in the courtroom.
The crackdown “can only mean that Egypt’s security agencies are moving from years of harassing independent media to wiping them out completely”, said Hossam Bahgat, the head of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR), who attended the court hearing.
“This escalation validates our fears that the arrest and…