Egypt / Middle East & North Africa

In a joint statement today, the Committee to Protect Journalists joined 18 other civil society groups in condemning the reported decision by U.S. President Joseph Biden’s administration to send military aid to Egypt and bypass human rights conditions set by Congress. The statement noted that the administration’s move to send $170 million in military aid,…

On November 2, Egyptian investigative journalist Hossam Bahgat is set to go on trial over a tweet. In the December 2020 post on Twitter–where he has more than 260,000 followers–Bahgat, who is also the executive director and founder of local rights group the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, criticized the former president of the National…

Washington, D.C., July 29, 2021—Egyptian authorities should drop all charges against press freedom advocate Gamal Eid and allow him to work and travel freely, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today. On July 27, an Egyptian investigative judge questioned Eid, founder of the regional press freedom group Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI), for…

New York, July 19, 2021 – Egyptian authorities must immediately release journalist Abdel Nasser Salama and drop all charges against him, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today. Yesterday, state security officers in Alexandria arrested Salama, a columnist at the state-run newspaper Al-Ahram and its former editor-in-chief, from his home, according to news reports. Prosecutors…

The Committee to Protect Journalists today joined seven other civil society groups in a joint statement calling on the United States government to transparently investigate any role Egyptian officials may have played in the killing of Saudi journalist and U.S. resident Jamal Khashoggi, and to publicly disclose any findings from that investigation. On June 21,…

On May 21, 2021, Egyptian state security forces arrested Tawfik Ghanem, a retired journalist who most recently worked as the Cairo-based regional director of the Turkish news agency Anadolu, according to news reports and one of his lawyers, who spoke to CPJ on the condition of anonymity, citing fear of reprisal. Authorities arrested Ghanem from…

New York, May 26, 2021 – In response to news reports that Egyptian freelance columnist Gamal al-Gamal’s health has seriously deteriorated during his pretrial detention in Cairo’s Tora Prison, and that he is suspected of having contracted COVID-19, the Committee to Protect Journalists issued the following statement: “We are extremely concerned by reports of journalist…

The Committee to Protect Journalists today joined 13 other civil society groups in sending an open letter to U.S. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken and Jake Sullivan, assistant to the president for national security affairs, urging the Biden administration not to waive human rights conditions in sending military aid to Egypt for fiscal year 2020.  In…

New York, March 1, 2021 – Egyptian authorities must immediately release journalist Gamal al-Gamal and drop all charges against him, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today. On February 22, authorities arrested al-Gamal, a freelance columnist who contributes to local and regional news websites, in Cairo International Airport upon his return from Turkey, where he…

New York, February 25, 2021—The Committee to Protect Journalists today issued the following statement in solidarity with Sherif Mansour, the Washington-based head of CPJ’s Middle East and North Africa program, his family, and all those defending human rights and press freedom in Egypt: “Egypt, an ally of the United States, portrays itself as a democracy,…