Al-Nas

2. Military Censorship

By Sherif Mansour

A swarm of police vehicles converged on Media Production City moments after Gen. Abdul-Fattah al-Sisi announced on July 3 that Mohamed Morsi had been ousted. The compound outside Cairo is home to nearly every TV station in Egypt, but the police were targeting five particular stations that night: the Muslim Brotherhood-run Misr25, and four pro-Morsi Islamist stations. One by one, the stations’ live coverage went off the air, while police herded and handcuffed about 200 employees, confiscated equipment, and seized cell phones. Taken to a security facility, the employees were interrogated about their associations with the Muslim Brotherhood. Most of the administrative and support workers were released in a few hours, but 22 journalists were kept for more than a day on accusations of conspiring to overthrow the regime.

New York, July 3, 2013--Authorities in Egypt's new military-run government raided Al-Jazeera's Egyptian station today, disrupting its service, and shut down at least three stations supportive of Mohamed Morsi in a worrying series of moves that seemed designed to cut off coverage of pro-Morsi events, according to news accounts.

The Baghdad offices of at least four independent daily newspapers were attacked on April 1, 2013, with the assailants destroying equipment and injuring several employees.