CAIRO: Egyptian authorities have published a list of telephone numbers for citizens to use to bring to the attention of prosecutors any media reports they perceive as undermining the country’s security or hurting public interest.
The publication of the numbers — listed in a statement issued late on Monday by the office of Egypt’s chief prosecutor — is a step up in the government’s crackdown on the media, less than two weeks before the presidential election in which the incumbent, President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi, is running virtually unopposed.
Last week, chief prosecutor Nabil Sadeq told his staff to monitor the media and move against any they consider to be “hurting national interests.”
Monday’s statement, however, has potentially provided millions of Egyptians who support Sisi and his government with an official channel to complain against any media content critical of the authorities.
The statement listed eight mobile phone numbers for different parts of Egypt, advising citizens to send complaints on WhatsApp or as text messages. It instructed citizens to provide their personal details, along with their complaints, and said the move was a follow-up to Sadeq’s statement last week.
Sisi’s government has already sought to exert heavy control over reporting on the March 26-28 election, issuing guidelines barring journalists from asking people who they would vote for beforehand or from conducting any polling.
Authorities have also increasingly depicted criticism as a violation of national security at a time when Egypt is trying to revive its economy battered by years of turmoil and contain an insurgency by Islamic militants.
A general-turned-president, Sisi has worked to quiet much of the media, demanding everyone fall in line with his policies to restore stability. But the threat of prosecution is in contrast to mostly indirect methods used in the past to silence dissenters.
The state media and most privately-owned TV networks are loyal to Sisi and spearheaded by powerful talk show hosts who lavishly praise his policies, cover up failures and demonize critics.
Critical TV personalities have been taken off air and dozens of independent and Islamist news sites on the Internet have been blocked. With pro-government media sometimes depicting foreign press as promoting a negative image of Egypt, cameramen in the streets can sometimes face harassment from crowds or police.
Since the crackdown began, a pro-government talk show host was detained for two days for insulting the police on his state TV talk show in which he advocated for higher salaries for policemen.
Egypt’s State Information service has called on officials and the country’s “elite” to boycott the BBC after it broadcast a report on the repression of dissent under Sisi that addressed torture and forced disappearances. It has demanding an apology from the BBC and asked the broadcaster to confirm that its report contained inaccuracies.
Also this month, prosecutors ordered the detention of two journalists after their arrest while preparing a report on the historic tramway in the Mediterranean city of Alexandria. In a separate case, the playwright and director of a play staged at a Cairo sports club were arrested for their involvement in a play seen as insulting to security forces.
Egyptian authorities have waged a fierce crackdown on Islamists since 2013, when Sisi as defense minister led the military’s ouster of President Mohamed Morsi, an Islamist whose one year in office proved divisive. Thousands of Islamists have been arrested, and the campaign has also targeted secular pro-democracy activists, many of whom are now in prison.
Sisi has said he wants to build a modern and democratic state but has also said liberties must take a backseat to ensuring stability and fighting terror.
Egypt escalates crackdown on media ahead of election
Egypt escalates crackdown on media ahead of election
Italian journalist arrested in Iran: Rome
- Cecilia Sala was detained on Dec. 19 by police in Tehran
- Foreign ministry said it had been following case closely
ROME: Italy denounced Friday the “unacceptable” arrest of an Italian journalist in Iran, who her employer said was being held in solitary confinement in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison.
Cecilia Sala was detained on Dec. 19 by police in Tehran, the Italian foreign ministry said in a statement, adding that Italy’s ambassador, Paola Amadei, had visited her earlier Friday.
Defense Minister Giudo Crosetto said on X that her arrest was “unacceptable,” adding that Italy was using “high-level political and diplomatic action” to try to secure her release.
Chora Media, an Italian podcast publisher for which Sala worked, said she had left Rome for Iran on Dec. 12 with a journalism visa, and was due to return on December 20.
But she went quiet on Dec. 19 and then did not board her flight. Shortly afterward she called her mother to say she had been arrested, it said.
“She was taken to Evin prison, where dissidents are held, and the reason for her arrest has not yet been formalized,” Chora said in a statement.
Sala also worked for Italian newspaper Il Foglio, which said she had been in Iran “to report on a country she knows and loves.”
“Journalism is not a crime, even in countries that repress all freedoms, including those of the press. Bring her home,” it said.
Chora said it had not publicized her case until now in the hope that she would swiftly be returned home. It called for her immediate release.
The foreign ministry said it had been following the case closely and was working with Iranian authorities to clarify Sala’s situation, including the conditions of her detention.
Sala, reported to be 29-years-old, had been able to make two phone calls to relatives, it said, without giving further details.
Lebanese journalist Abir Rahal killed by husband before his suicide
- The couple were at a Shariah court in the town of Shheem in Mount Lebanon to complete their divorce proceedings
- Masoud fled the scene after shooting his wife at a close range
BEIRUT: Lebanese journalist Abir Rahal was shot to death by her husband inside a courthouse before he committed suicide, reported the state news agency NNA.
The couple were at a Shariah court in the town of Shheem in Mount Lebanon to complete their divorce proceedings after Rahal filed for separation from her husband, Khalil Masoud, according to media reports.
Masoud fled the scene after shooting his wife at a close range, posting a video on his Facebook account an hour later detailing their financial disputes over a local news website he claimed to have founded.
He also expressed his intent to commit suicide after the video is posted.
Security officers later found his body in his car after he shot himself with a gun in his possession.
“When you watch this video, I will have departed this world,” said Masoud.
He was transported to the government hospital in Sibline but succumbed to his injuries shortly afterward.
The couple are succeeded by their three children.
Palestinian TV says Israeli strike kills 5 journalists in Gaza
- The Committee to Protect Journalists’ Middle East arm said the organization was devastated
GAZA: A Palestinian TV channel affiliated with a militant group said five of its journalists were killed Thursday in an Israeli strike on their vehicle in Gaza, with Israel’s military saying it had targeted a “terrorist cell.”
A missile hit the journalists’ broadcast truck as it was parked in the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, according to a statement from their employer, Al-Quds Today.
It is affiliated with Islamic Jihad, whose militants have fought alongside Hamas in the Gaza Strip and took part in the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel that sparked the war.
The channel identified the five staffers as Faisal Abu Al-Qumsan, Ayman Al-Jadi, Ibrahim Al-Sheikh Khalil, Fadi Hassouna and Mohammed Al-Lada’a.
They were killed “while performing their journalistic and humanitarian duty,” the statement said.
“We affirm our commitment to continue our resistant media message,” it added.
The Israeli military said in its own statement that it had conducted “a precise strike on a vehicle with an Islamic Jihad terrorist cell inside in the area of Nuseirat.”
It added that “prior to the strike, numerous steps were taken to mitigate the risk of harming civilians.”
According to witnesses in Nuseirat, a missile fired by an Israeli aircraft hit the broadcast vehicle, which was parked outside Al-Awda Hospital, setting the vehicle on fire and killing those inside.
The Committee to Protect Journalists’ Middle East arm said the organization was “devastated by the reports that five journalists and media workers were killed inside their broadcasting vehicle by an Israeli strike.”
“Journalists are civilians and must always be protected,” it added in a statement on social media.
The Palestinian Journalists Syndicate said last week that more than 190 journalists had been killed and at least 400 injured since the start of the war in Gaza.
It was triggered by the Hamas-led October 7 attack last year, which resulted in 1,208 deaths, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
Israel’s retaliatory military campaign has killed at least 45,361 people in Gaza, a majority of them civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry that the UN considers reliable.
Palestinian Authority clashes with Al Jazeera over Jenin coverage
- Palestinian Authority security forces have battled Islamist fighters in Jenin, as they try to control one of the historic centers of militancy in the West Bank ahead of a likely shakeout in Palestinian politics after the Gaza war
JERUSALEM: Al Jazeera television has clashed with the Palestinian Authority over its coverage of the weeks-long standoff between Palestinian security forces and militant fighters in the occupied West Bank city of Jenin.
Fatah, the faction which controls the Palestinian Authority, condemned the Qatari-headquartered network, which has reported extensively on the clashes in Jenin, saying it was sowing division in “our Arab homeland in general and in Palestine in particular.” It encouraged Palestinians not to cooperate with the network.
Israel closed down Al Jazeera’s operations in Israel in May, saying it threatened national security. In September, it ordered the network’s bureau in Ramallah, to close for 45 days after an intelligence assessment that the offices were being used to support terrorist activities.
“Al Jazeera has successfully maintained its professionalism throughout its coverage of the unfolding events in Jenin,” it said in a statement on Tuesday.
Palestinian Authority security forces have battled Islamist fighters in Jenin, as they try to control one of the historic centers of militancy in the West Bank ahead of a likely shakeout in Palestinian politics after the Gaza war.
Forces of the PA, which exercises limited self-rule in the West Bank, moved into Jenin in early December, clashing daily with fighters from Hamas and Islamic Jihad, both of which are supported by Iran.
The standoff has fueled bitter anger on both sides, deepening the divisions which have long existed between the Palestinian factions and their supporters.
Al Jazeera said its broadcasts fairly presented the views of both sides.
“The voices of both the Palestinian resistance and the Spokesperson of the Palestinian National Security Forces have always been present on Al Jazeera’s screens,” Al Jazeera said.
‘Like a dream’: AFP photographer’s return to Syria
- “We didn’t dare to imagine that Assad could fall because his presence was so anchored in us,” said Al-Doumy
- Award-winning photographer has spent the last few years covering migrant crisis for AFP’s Lille bureau in northern France
DOUMA: AFP photographer Sameer Al-Doumy never dreamed he would be able to return to the hometown in Syria that he escaped through a tunnel seven years ago after it was besieged by Bashar Assad’s forces.
Douma, once a militant stronghold near Damascus, suffered terribly for its defiance of the former regime, and was the victim of a particularly horrific chemical weapons attack in 2018.
“It is like a dream for me today to find myself back here,” he said.
“The revolution was a dream, getting out of a besieged town and of Syria was a dream, as it is now being able to go back.
“We didn’t dare to imagine that Assad could fall because his presence was so anchored in us,” said the 26-year-old.
“My biggest dream was to return to Syria at a moment like this after 13 years of war, just as it was my biggest dream in 2017 to leave for a new life,” said the award-winning photographer who has spent the last few years covering the migrant crisis for AFP’s Lille bureau in northern France.
“I left when I was 19,” said Sameer, all of whose immediate family are in exile, apart from his sister.
“This is my home, all my memories are here, my childhood, my adolescence. I spent my life in Douma in this house my family had to flee and where my cousin now lives.
“The house hasn’t changed, although the top floor was destroyed in the bombardments.
“The sitting room is still the same, my father’s beloved library hasn’t changed. He would settle down there every morning to read the books that he had collected over the years — it was more important to him than his children.
“I went looking for my childhood stuff that my mother kept for me but I could not find it. I don’t know if it exists anymore.
“I haven’t found any comfort here, perhaps because I haven’t found anyone from my family or people I was close to. Some have left the country and others were killed or have disappeared.
“People have been through so much over the last 13 years, from the peaceful protests of the revolution, to the war and the siege and then being forced into exile.
“My memories are here but they are associated with the war which started when I was 13. What I lived through was hard, and what got me through was my family and friends, and they are no longer here.
“The town has changed. I remember the bombed buildings, the rubble. Today life has gone back to a kind of normal as the town waits for people to return.”
Douma was besieged by Assad’s forces from the end of 2012, with Washington blaming his forces for a chemical attack in the region that left more than 1,400 people dead the following year.
Sameer’s career as a photojournalist began when he and his brothers began taking photos of what was happening around them.
“After the schools closed I started to go out filming the protests with my brothers here in front of the main mosque, where the first demonstration in Douma was held after Friday prayers, and where the first funerals of the victims were also held.
“I set up my camera on the first floor of a building which overlooks the mosque and then changed my clothes afterwards so I would not be recognized and arrested. Filming the protests was banned.
“When the security forces attacked, I would take the SIM card out of my phone and the memory card out of my camera and put them in my mouth.”
That way he could swallow them if he was caught.
In May 2017, Sameer fled through a tunnel dug by the militants and eventually found himself in Idlib with former fighters and their families.
“I took the name Sameer Al-Doumy (Sameer from Douma) to affirm that I belonged somewhere,” even though he was exiled, he said. “I stopped using my first name, Motassem, to protect my family living in Damascus.
“In France I have a happy and stable life. I have a family, friends and a job. But I am not rooted to any particular place. When I went back to Syria, I felt I had a country.
“When you are abroad, you get used to the word ‘refugee’ and you get on with your life and make a big effort to integrate in a new society. But your country remains the place that accepts you as you are. You don’t have to prove anything.
“When I left Syria, I never thought one day I would be able to return. When the news broke, I couldn’t believe it. It was impossible Assad could fall. Lots of people are still in shock and are afraid. It is hard to get your head around how a regime that filled people with so much fear could collapse.
“When I returned to the Al-Midan district of Damascus (which had long resisted the regime), I could not stop myself crying.
“I am sad not to be with my loved ones. But I know they will return, even if it takes a while.
“My dream now is that one day we will all come together again in Syria.”
