US journalist on Cairo Times expelled from country

US journalist Charles Levinson, who was working for the weekly Cairo Times, was expelled from Egypt when he returned from vacation in the United States. Reporters Without Borders called on the Egyptian authorities to reverse the decision and allow the journalist to return to Cairo where he had worked for more than a year. Levinson was given no explanation for his 29 January expulsion but the newspaper's publisher, Hicham Kassem said he was told by the head of the state intelligence services that Levinson was considered to pose a threat to state security. "His explanation about the expulsion of Charles Levinson is unacceptable," he told the international press freedom organisation. Levinson had been held for four hours by security forces at Cairo airport in December 2003 when he returned from Istanbul after covering the bombing of the British Consulate and the British HSBC Bank for the San Francisco Chronicle. While in Turkey he wrote two articles for US dailies based on an Amnesty International report that exposed the use of torture in Egyptian prisons and reported on the deaths in custody of militants of the Muslim Brotherhood. These articles appear to have been behind the security forces' hostility towards him that led to his expulsion. The Cairo Times is an English-language Egyptian newspaper, that was founded in 1997 and is published under a foreign permit, since a national permit would be virtually impossible to obtain.