Egyptian journalists plan weekend protest over detention of six colleagues

Journalists with a symbolic coffin representing press freedom at a 2016 protest. Egyptian journalists say the arrests are part of mounting pressure against the media. Photograph: APView image in fullscreenJournalists with a symbolic coffin representing press freedom at a 2016 protest. Egyptian journalists say the arrests are part of mounting pressure against the media. Photograph: APEgyptian journalists plan weekend protest over detention of six colleagues Matsadaash staff allege torture and forced confessions after being held on charges of working for Muslim Brotherhood

Egyptian journalists are planning a new protest in Cairo this weekend after six colleagues were charged with terrorism offences amid allegations they had been tortured in police detention.

Last week, Egyptian authorities arrested the journalists, from the independent factchecking and investigative platform Matsadaash, accusing them in a statement of being unlicensed and producing false news on behalf of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood.

The journalists – Abdallah Qadri, Mohamed Ashraf Abu Emeira, Mohamed Adel, Islam Barakat, Mohamed Mahmoud and Omar Helal – were arrested at their homes and in the street by plainclothes officers.

One was charged on Sunday, the other five late on Wednesday. All six have told lawyers they had been tortured and forced to film false confessions, allegations that police deny.

“We were horrified by the news of the torture of our six colleagues,” said Hadeer El-Mahdawy, a journalist on the protest’s organising committee.

In a statement issued on Wednesday evening, the public prosecution said “three journalists who alleged ill-treatment had undergone forensic examinations that found no injuries or signs of violence”.

Another journalist, Rasha Azab, was questioned by the supreme state security prosecution for a post on social media criticising the interior ministry over the arrests. Released on bail, Azab faces charges of using a website to promote ideas advocating terrorist crimes. Her lawyer, Mahienour El-Masry, said prosecutors confronted Azab with 11 identical complaints lodged in different governorates over the post.

Lobna Darwish, of the Egyptian Journalists’ Syndicate, whose lawyers are representing the six from Matsadaash, said the journalists “had told prosecutors that they were blindfolded and handcuffed for days, beaten and forcibly stripped”. Some were given electric shocks, she said, while journalists also described threats to harm members of their families.

Read moreDarwish added that they were forced to read purported confessions from sheets of paper in filmed sessions involving “repeated takes” in front of what she described as “professional filming crews”.

The interior ministry has denied the journalists’ allegations of torture or ill- treatment, saying they were “baseless and an attempt by the detainees to evade the accusations against them”. It described the six as “Muslim Brotherhood elements working for the group”.

For journalists, the arrests and alleged abuse form part of a broader escalation from the Egyptian authorities against independent media, amid poor pay and insecure employment across the profession.

“We are at a very difficult moment on every level,” El-Mahdawy said. “But it is very important that we declare our rejection of what is happening and use every tool we have to protect what remains of this profession, and to defend our colleagues and ourselves.”