Lina Attalah, editor in chief of Mada Masr, speaks at the International Journalism Festival in Perugia, Italy, in April 2024 [file photo]. Credit: Jennifer 8. Lee via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).
An Egyptian court has postponed until November 18 the retrial of Lina Attalah, editor of the independent site Mada Masr, after her lawyers asked to replace a judge who ruled against her last month.
The New Cairo Misdemeanor Court adjourned the first hearing on Wednesday so that the Court of Appeals can consider a request to remove Judge Mohamed Mubarak, Mada Masr and the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights said. On October 27 the same judge fined Attalah 3 million Egyptian pounds, about $56,200, Reuters reported, and ordered Mada Masr closed after a single hearing on a charge of running an unlicensed website. An appeal against that ruling is due on November 25.
Her lawyer, Hassan El Azhary, told Al Manassa that the recusal request rests on procedural violations at the earlier hearing, on the judge’s prior view of the same facts and charges, and on a public statement by the Supreme Judicial Council that commented on the case. The council has rejected suggestions that the earlier trial was unfair, Reuters reported. Al Manassa also reported that court guards identified journalists in the courtroom and forced them outside.
The retrial concerns a 2024 case in which Attalah was sentenced in her absence to a year in prison and fined 2 million pounds on charges of publishing false news and running a website without a license. The rights group said neither she nor the Journalists Syndicate was told of the referral or the verdict for more than two years, and that she learned of it only on October 27. Mada Masr says it applied for a license under a 2018 media law and never received a formal decision.
Attalah told the BBC that the cases are meant to send a shocking message to the few independent newsrooms left, warning that everyone should be careful and wonder what comes next, BBC Amharic reported. On Tuesday the UN human rights office urged Egypt to end what it called assaults on press freedom, citing her case and the detention of six journalists from the fact checking platform Matsadaash. Egyptian authorities did not respond to Reuters questions about the case.
Sources
- Reuters, Egyptian court postpones retrial of independent news site’s editor, Nov 11
- Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, Lina Attalah’s retrial postponed to November 18, Nov 11
- Al Manassa, Lina Attalah’s retrial adjourned as defense seeks judge’s recusal, Nov 11
- BBC News Amharic, UN condemns Egypt’s press repression as Cairo postpones journalist’s trial, Nov 12