Abdullah Shousha

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Egyptian journalist Abdullah Shousha was arrested on September 22, 2013, on multiple anti-state charges while covering protests in the city of Ismailiya. In 2019, Shousha was acquitted of all charges and was set to be released, but prosecutors filed additional terrorism charges against him and ordered his continued detention. 

Shousha worked as a correspondent and camera operator for Amgad TV, a privately owned Islamist channel that closed in June 2013, according to a local journalist who spoke to CPJ on the condition of anonymity, citing fear of reprisal. Shousha also provided photos and footage to the local opposition news outlet Rassd, according to the same journalist and Shousha’s Facebook page, which CPJ reviewed but which has since been taken offline. Shousha also has a YouTube channel, where he posted video coverage of protests in August 2013 by supporters of former President Mohamed Morsi, whom the military had removed from power the previous month.

A month before his arrest, Shousha filmed an unarmed protester being shot by Egyptian armed forces in Ismailiya. The footage was aired by numerous television channels and by September 2022 had been viewed over 620,000 times on Shousha’s YouTube page. The local journalist who spoke with CPJ said that he believes Shousha’s arrest stems from his YouTube coverage of the August 2013 protests. 

In 2013, prosecutors charged Shousha with incitement to violence, participating in an illegal protest, and incitement against the government, and ordered him held in pretrial detention, according to a report by local rights group the Egyptian Observatory for Journalism and Media and news reports.

On April 17, 2016, a criminal court found the journalist guilty of all charges and sentenced him to two years in prison, according to a report that month by now-shuttered regional rights group Journalists Against Torture. The court also convicted him of raising what is known as the "Raba’a Sign," a four-finger salute meant to commemorate the deaths of hundreds of Muslim Brotherhood supporters during the violent dispersal of a sit-in at Raba’a al-Adawiya Square in August 2013, according to that report and the local journalist. Authorities banned the sign in 2016, according to reports

Shousha served his two-year sentence but remained in custody because he had also been named a defendant in 2016 in what was known as the "Cell Cluster" case, in which 89 people were accused of belonging to the banned Muslim Brotherhood group, setting fire to vehicles belonging to members of the police force and judiciary in Ismailiya, and belonging to armed groups, according to the Egyptian Observatory for Journalism and Media

An Ismailiya court acquitted Shousha of all charges in the “Cell Cluster” case on April 2, 2019, and ordered his release, according the Egyptian Observatory for Journalism and Media. Authorities started his release procedures that month but did not disclose his location to his family or lawyer until June 2019, when prosecutors filed a new terrorism charge against him and ordered him to remain in detention, according to news reports

As of late 2023, Shousha was being held in Tora Prison in Cairo. He suffers from asthma and high blood sugar, according to the same local journalist, who added that Shousha had been denied medical care in prison. 

The Ministry of Interior, which oversees the police, the prison system, and the prosecutor general’s office did not answer CPJ’s emails requesting comment on Shousha’s case in late 2023.