Egypt : Al Jazeera producer held without trial for the past year
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) and Amnesty International have issued a joint statement calling for the immediate release of Mahmoud Hussein, an Egyptian journalist who was arrested in Cairo exactly one year ago and has been held provisionally ever since.
Employed as a producer in Doha by Qatari TV news broadcaster Al Jazeera (the Egyptian government's bugbear), Hussein was arrested on 23 December 2016 after returning to Egypt to spend the holidays with relatives still living in Cairo.
For no apparent reason, the Egyptian authorities detained him, searched and filmed his family's home, and interrogated his relatives. He spent several months in solitary confinement after his arrest and his health has deteriorated in prison. There are no grounds for the charges brought against him – “publishing false information,” “receiving foreign funding” and “belonging to a banned group” – and his trial has still not begun.
RSF and Amnesty International urge the Egyptian authorities to free him at once. They also call for the immediate release of all the other journalists currently detained in Egypt.
Egypt is ranked 161st out of 180 countries in RSF’s 2017 World Press Freedom Index.
Here is the PDF of the joint statement.
