20 January 2025
AFTE condemns the detention of writer and journalist Ahmed Serag in connection with a new opinion case, on the usual charges of joining a terrorist group, spreading false news, and using a website to promote terrorism. Serag was detained for performing his journalistic work. AFTE calls on the Public Prosecutor to quickly release him, drop the charges levelled against him, stop the crackdown on journalists, lift restrictions on press freedom, and protect journalists instead of targeting and detaining them.
Serag was arrested by plainclothes security personnel on 15 January while leaving the school where he works in Nasr City, Cairo. The next day, he appeared before the Supreme State Security Prosecution in connection with Case No. 7 of 2025 (Supreme State Security). The prosecution decided to remand him in custody for 15 days pending investigation.
Serag’s arrest came after conducting a journalistic interview for the Zat Masr website with Nada Mougheeth, the wife of cartoonist Ashraf Omar who is detained in connection with an opinion case. During the interview, Mougheeth accused the forces who arrested her husband of seizing a sum of money from their savings without fully documenting it among the case exhibits. The Supreme State Security Prosecution also summoned Mougheeth for investigation in connection with the same case, but decided later to release her on bail. It was expected that Serag also would be released, but the prosecution decided to detain him to punish for practicing his journalistic work.
Instead of investigating Mougheeth’s statements regarding the arrest of her husband, the Public Prosecution approved the National Security investigations, which considered Mougheeth’s testimony as false news and interrogated her and Serag as defendants and not witnesses. The Supreme State Security Prosecution has long used these practices against opinion makers, journalists and human rights defenders, thus widening the gap of mistrust in the justice system, which has become a tool in the hands of the security services.
AFTE stresses that the targeting of Serag comes within the framework of a general context in which the pace of detention of journalists and clampdown on press freedom has recently increased. It comes after months of calm that followed the election of Khaled El-Balshy as head of the Journalists Syndicate, during which union efforts managed to release a number of detained journalists. However, such releases have witnessed a significant decline in recent months, as journalists Khaled Mamdouh, Ashraf Omar, Ahmed Bayoumi, Yasser Abu Al-Ela and others were arrested, and editors-in-chief and journalists were summoned to the Supreme State Security Prosecution over news articles that criticized the government performance or contradicted the authorities’ narrative. Meanwhile, the Supreme Council for Media Regulation continued to arbitrarily prevent independent news websites from obtaining licenses in order to deny them legal protection.
AFTE calls for the release of all detained journalists. It also backs El-Balshy’s demand to release detained journalists, including those who have recently been referred to trial while remaining in detention, in violation of the Criminal Procedures Law, after they all have served the maximum period of pretrial detention prescribed by law.
