Lina Attalah, editor-in-chief of Mada Masr, learned on Tuesday, October 27, 2026, during the procedures for her release, that an in absentia ruling had been issued against her in 2024 sentencing her to one year in prison, on charges of publishing false news and running a website without a license. The defense team filed an objection to the ruling, and a hearing to consider it was set for Wednesday, November 11, 2026.
The in absentia ruling surfaced hours after Attalah was convicted in Case No. 11743 of 2026, when the Ninth Circuit of the New Cairo Misdemeanor Court fined her three million pounds ($53,390) and ordered the website closed and its tools and equipment confiscated, on the charge of running a website without a license. The court ordered her held until the fine was paid, and she was then released seven hours after her detention, once the fine was paid.
Sara Qudah, regional director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, described the conviction and the closure order in a statement as “a devastating blow to press freedom in Egypt.” The committee said the number of journalists jailed in Egypt had reached 25 as of late October, the highest since 2021.
Mada Masr has repeatedly applied for a license from the Supreme Council for Media Regulation since 2018. It received no reply to some of its applications, one was rejected without notifying it, and it challenged that rejection in court, while an application it submitted in 2023 is still pending.
Photo: Jennifer 8. Lee via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)
