Arrest of TV Journalist and Blogger Is Latest Blow to Free Speech
(Cairo, April 20, 2007) – The Egyptian government should immediately release and drop politically motivated charges against a television journalist and prominent blogger arrested on Saturday night, Human Rights Watch said today.
Around midnight on April 14, security forces at the Cairo airport detained `Abd al-Monim Mahmud, a 27-year-old journalist for the London-based satellite channel Al-Hiwar and prominent blogger affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, as he attempted to travel to Sudan to do reporting for an Al-Hiwar segment on human rights in the Arab world.
The next day, a prosecutor charged Mahmud with “membership in a banned organization,” with “being an administrator of a banned organization,” and with funding an armed group. According to Islam Lutfi, one of Mahmud’s lawyers present at his interrogation, the State Security bureau’s preliminary investigation (mahdar al-tahamiyyat) also cited Mahmud’s public criticisms of the government’s human rights record and specifically its use of torture. The prosecutor ordered Mahmud detained for 15 days, after which time the prosecutor must review the order.
Continue reading ‘HRW » Egypt: Release Journalist Who Criticized Torture’
