Attack on freedom of the press | Not a soldier of the national project

Photo: Khaled Desouki / afp A court in Egypt has ordered the closure of the independent news site “Mada Masr”. Lina Attalah, the news portal's editor-in-chief, was detained for several hours on Tuesday following a court case. The court found her guilty of operating an unregistered website. Attalah was released after “Mada Masr” paid the fine of 3 million Egyptian pounds, the equivalent of almost 48,000 euros. This is the maximum possible punishment for the accusation, and the court also ordered the confiscation of the property of “Mada Masr”.

Amnesty International calls the case a serious blow to press freedom in Egypt. In the press freedom rankings of the organization Reporters Without Borders, the country is currently ranked 169th out of 180. In an interview, editor-in-chief Attalah describes the role that Egyptian President Abd al-Fattah al-Sisi assigns to the media in his country: “There is a national project that he is leading, and we are his soldiers. We're basically supposed to agree, support, not criticize, not weaken, basically not say anything different than what he said." The price for acting differently is high, as Attalah is now once again experiencing firsthand.

She founded the news portal “Mada Masr” in 2013 in the wake of the political upheavals following the so-called Arab Spring. In an interview, Attalah describes the period of the Egyptian revolution from 2011 as a heyday of freedom of expression: »The space literally exploded in terms of expression and diversity of voices. People were suddenly commenting on all sorts of topics that had previously been reserved for the hiding places of activist circles." At that time, Attalah was still working as a senior editor at the Egypt Independent newspaper. However, this had to cease operations shortly before the Muslim Brotherhood took over government in 2012 and the subsequent military coup by current President al-Sisi. Attalah founded “Mada Masr” with colleagues. The news site reports critically in Arabic and English about al-Sisi's authoritarian government, the opposition to it and international issues.

At the trial against the editor-in-chief on Tuesday, the judge ordered the courtroom to be cleared except for Attalah and her defense attorney, as the managing director of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, Hossam Bahgat, who was also present, reported to Mada Masr. The hall was then filled with plainclothes officials and security guards, including an official from the national secret service NSA. The court rejected all requests from the defense, including hearing witnesses and taking evidence. Against the wishes of Lina Attalah and her own lawyers, the judge appointed her a new lawyer and began recording his applications without the new lawyer saying a word. He then read out the sentence, which included the maximum possible fine and the closure of the website, and Attalah was led out of the court by security guards and taken into custody.

It is not the first time that Lina Attalah and her newspaper have had to deal with the Egyptian state. According to Amnesty International, Attalah has been subject to six criminal investigations in the past six years as a result of her reporting. The website was blocked in Egypt in 2017 and has since then only been accessible from Egypt via a VPN. Other independent media and non-governmental organization websites are also affected by the closures.

In 2018, the Egyptian government passed a new media law. Since then, media outlets have had to register with the government agency responsible for media supervision. Reporters Without Borders sharply criticizes the law as a tool for systematic state censorship and restrictions on press freedom. Since then, Mada Masr has been trying to get registered, but the authorities have always rejected or failed to respond to the application. Now Attalah has been convicted in court on exactly this accusation of an unregistered website.

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