Fine, closure, detention: Cairo's independent press fears for its future after Mada Masr ruling
A Cairo court has fined Lina Attalah, editor-in-chief of the independent outlet Mada Masr, 3 million pounds and ordered the website shut. Attalah was detained in the courtroom. Egyptian journalists fear for the country's last independent voices, while other outlets report the case dryly as a licensing violation.
What happened
On Tuesday the New Cairo Misdemeanour Court imposed the maximum fine of 3 million Egyptian pounds (about 53,000 US dollars) on Mada Masr's editor-in-chief. It also ordered the website closed and its equipment confiscated. The basis is the 2018 press and media law: Mada Masr allegedly runs a news site without a licence from the Supreme Council for Media Regulation. The first-instance ruling can be appealed.
Mada Masr, founded in 2013 and blocked in Egypt since 2017, says it applied for a licence in 2018, 2020 and most recently in June 2023 without ever receiving a reasoned decision. After the verdict, security forces took Attalah into custody, according to Al-Quds Al-Arabi until the fine is paid. A false-news allegation she had been questioned about did not reach the court.
The Supreme Council for Media Regulation had not commented publicly by Tuesday afternoon.
The mood on the ground
Among Egyptian journalists the verdict caused dismay. Hossam Bahgat, head of the rights group EIPR, said the court rejected defence motions and assigned Attalah an unknown court-appointed lawyer against her will, although eight of her own lawyers were present. He called the reading of the verdict even more shocking.
The Journalists Syndicate under Khaled El-Balshy backed Mada Masr, arguing licensing disputes belong before administrative, not criminal, courts. It calls for reasoned licence decisions, an end to prosecutions of unlicensed sites and the lifting of blocks. A member of its freedoms committee said she and other journalists were barred from the hearing.
The concern goes beyond one case: according to Zawia3, six journalists from the investigative platform Matsda2sh have been in pretrial detention since late September, and 119 organisations and outlets had demanded an end to Attalah's trial.
The tone is very different at outlets such as Cairo24, where the ruling appears as a brief item about a licensing violation, with no mention of the detention, the defence or criticism from the syndicate and rights groups. Al-Shorouk reports in more detail and quotes Bahgat and the syndicate.
Voices from the media
Sources
This article was rewritten from local-language sources. Every statement about the mood is based on the linked reports.