An Egyptian journalist who was detained over the weekend was released late on Sunday, his employer announced in a tweet.
Karim Assad is a member of the editorial team of Matsda2sh (“Don’t Believe”), a local fact-checking platform. He was arrested by plainclothes security forces at his home in the eastern Cairo neighborhood of al-Shorouk on Saturday after his platform covered Zambia’s seizure of a private plane coming from Egypt.
In a Saturday tweet, Matsda2sh said security forces raided Assad’s home, physically assaulted his wife and threatened their child before taking Assad to an unknown location.
The release came after the head of Egypt’s Journalists Syndicate, Khaled el-Balshy, contacted the authorities and urged his safe return.
Matsda2sh was launched in April 2018 as an “independent platform specialized in verification and news scrutiny” to vet reporting and debunk misinformation, according to its website. The platform keeps its team and journalists anonymous for security reasons.
A few hours before Assad’s arrest, the platform had expressed concerns about attacks on its journalists and social media pages following a security breach.
“The security entity that gained access to our platform was able to delete two Facebook posts related to our coverage of reports regarding an Egyptian aircraft that landed in Zambia with smuggled gold,” it said in a Saturday press release, adding that the plane carried “senior Egyptian government officials.”
Matsda2sh published several reports about the arrest of alleged Egyptian security service members involved in the incident last week. Zambian authorities had announced the seizure of a private plane that arrived from Cairo carrying $5.7 million in cash, 602 bars of what seems to be gold and five pistols with 126 rounds of ammunition. The head of the Zambian Drug Enforcement Commission, Nason Banda, told reporters last Tuesday that 10 people on board were arrested, including a Zambian, six Egyptians, a Dutchman, a Spaniard and a Latvian.
A well-informed Egyptian source told the Middle East News Agency last week that the plane was not Egyptian and had transited through the Cairo airport. He added that the plane had passed safety and security checks before taking off to Zambia.
In 2021, the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists ranked Egypt among the world’s worst jailers of journalists, preceded only by Myanmar in second place and China in first. At least 21 journalists were imprisoned in Egypt in 2022, according to a CPJ census.
Since the fall of the now-banned Muslim Brotherhood and President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s ascent to power in 2014, authorities have been cracking down on dissent, arresting thousands of journalists and activists. Reports of torture, forced disappearance and other rights violations have increased pressure on Sisi, a major ally of the West and Washington.
In the past few months, Sisi has issued several presidential pardons, most recently on Saturday. A total of 34 prisoners were released over the weekend by presidential decree, including prominent activist Ahmed Douma. In 2013, Douma was sentenced to 15 years in jail over his role in the 2011 uprising that toppled longtime dictator Hosni Mubarak.
Source : Al Monitor
