LabourStart, the international labour network, in partnership with the International Federation of Journalists, launched on Tuesday, October 20, 2026, an urgent online campaign titled “Egypt: Free jailed journalists now,” calling on the Egyptian authorities to immediately and unconditionally release the six journalists of the Matsda2sh platform: Mohamed Ashraf Abu Omeira, Abdullah Qadri, Islam Barakat, Omar Hilal, Mohamed Mahmoud, and Mohamed Adel, as well as all journalists imprisoned in Egypt. The campaign came three weeks after the arrest of the six, who make up the platform’s entire editorial team working inside Egypt, and one week after the Supreme State Security Prosecution’s decision to renew their detention for fifteen days in Case No. 8083 of 2026 (Supreme State Security).
The campaign allows anyone who wishes to take part, after entering their name and email address, to send a unified message to Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly and Interior Minister Major General Mahmoud Tawfik, with copies reaching official email addresses including those of the Cabinet and the Journalists Syndicate. The message states that journalists must be able to carry out their work without fear of arbitrary arrest or intimidation, that critical, fact-seeking journalism is not a crime, and that the Egyptian Constitution protects reporting on matters of public interest and the public’s right to access reliable information. The message holds the government responsible for protecting journalists from all forms of pressure, intimidation, and violence, in line with Egyptian laws and the international conventions ratified by Egypt, and calls on it to drop all charges against the six and release them together with all journalists held behind bars in Egypt.
The campaign page noted that 24 other journalists are held in Egyptian prisons alongside the Matsda2sh team, some of them detained for years, and credited its main photo to Zawia3. The number of participants in the campaign reached 582 as of Wednesday morning, October 21.
Monir Zaarour, Middle East and Arab World Policy and Programme Director at the International Federation of Journalists, tells Zawia3: “The arrest of the colleagues working at the Matsda2sh platform constituted a great shock to the International Federation of Journalists and the member unions. Therefore, we will continue our struggle for their release and their return to their loved ones and colleagues. Imprisoning journalists for no reason other than doing their work and their commitment to the standards and mission of the journalism profession is among the greatest dangers the profession faces.”
Zaarour adds: “Likewise, imprisoning journalists who expose disinformation and lies in the public information space represents the greatest danger to the course of development in all countries, including Egypt. Global experiences prove that there can be no sustainable development without critical journalism.”
The launch of the campaign coincided with the Supreme State Security Prosecution summoning Lina Attalah, editor-in-chief of the Mada Masr website, for questioning today, Wednesday, October 21, in a new case, two weeks after the same prosecution questioned journalist Rasha Azab, who took part in a solidarity sit-in with the Matsda2sh team inside the Journalists Syndicate, and released her on bail.
Forty-Eight Hours of Raids
The security campaign began late on the evening of Monday, September 28, when a security force raided the home of journalist Abdullah Qadri, then the home of his colleague Mohamed Ashraf Abu Omeira, confiscated their phones and laptops, and took them to an unknown destination, according to what was documented by the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, whose lawyers are defending the entire team. During the dawn and daytime of Tuesday, September 29, the raids expanded to three governorates, as forces arrested Islam Barakat from his home in Gharbia, and Omar Hilal from his home in Port Said, then Mohamed Mahmoud and Mohamed Adel from a street in Cairo, the last two members of the team who had remained outside detention. By Tuesday evening, the platform’s entire team present inside Egypt was in detention.
The Egyptian Initiative said that the forces that raided the homes did not present an arrest or search warrant, did not inform the families of where their sons were being taken, and confiscated phones and laptops, including devices belonging to family members. Islam Barakat’s family recounted that members of the force blindfolded him and handcuffed him, and told his relatives they would bring him back within a quarter of an hour. Abdelrahman Mansour, one of the platform’s founders, told the Associated Press that the force that took Abu Omeira smashed his bookcase and the internet device in his home.
During the first days, the families of the six sent 17 complaints by telegram to the Public Prosecutor, the First Attorney General of the Supreme State Security Prosecutions, and the Interior Minister, without receiving a response. The Egyptian Initiative called on Public Prosecutor Counselor Mohamed Shawki to open an urgent investigation to determine the places of detention, and held the Public Prosecution responsible for the journalists’ safety, then its lawyers filed, on the morning of Saturday, October 3, an eighteenth complaint requesting an investigation into the circumstances of the arrests, after security forces refused to show the families the judicial warrant issued for the arrest and bringing in.
Reporters Without Borders said the incident is the first of its kind in Egypt to put an entire newsroom behind bars. Human Rights Watch said, in a statement issued on October 2, that holding the journalists incommunicado while denying their whereabouts may amount to enforced disappearance under international law, and quoted Bassam Khawaja, deputy Middle East and North Africa director at the organization, as saying that dismantling an entire newsroom within hours without prior warning or reason sends a frightening message to every journalist working in Egypt.
Sixty Hours Before Official Acknowledgment
No official body acknowledged holding the six for about sixty hours. On the morning of Thursday, October 1, the Interior Ministry published a statement on its Facebook and X pages, saying it had monitored an online page titled “Matsda2sh,” which it described as “unlicensed and managed from abroad” and as broadcasting false news and distorting facts, and that examination showed it to be “among the media committees of the terrorist Muslim Brotherhood, run by the fugitive Brotherhood member abroad” Abdelrahman Shoukry Ali Abdel Galil Mansour, assisted by elements inside the country who prepare the material and send it to him for publication in exchange for funding from abroad. The statement added that it had been possible to “legalize the procedures” and arrest six members of what it called the committee, one of them registered with the Journalists Syndicate and the rest not registered, and that the ministry had informed the head of the Journalists Syndicate “at the time” of the arrest of the registered journalist and the background of his arrest.
The statement contained no specific charge under the Penal Code or the Anti-Terrorism Law, no case number, and neither the place of detention nor the body investigating the six. Syndicate sources said the Syndicate had received no prior or simultaneous notification, and that it learned of the incident from the families’ pleas for help and from the Egyptian Initiative’s lawyers.
Matsda2sh responded the same day with a five-point statement titled “We Are Not Brotherhood, by the Testimony of the Security Agencies.” It said in its first point that over eight years it had published hundreds of corrections to statements and news promoted by entities and figures affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, and debunked hundreds of rumors broadcast by media outlets operating from outside Egypt, and that its latest correction was issued on September 27, one day before the team’s arrest, when it corrected false information that spread about Presidential Decree No. 395 of 2026 delegating to the Minister of Defense and Military Production, Lieutenant General Ashraf Salem, some of the powers of the President of the Republic set out in the General Mobilization Law.
The platform said in the remaining points that all members of its team are Egyptians residing inside Egypt, that the transparency data on its Facebook and X accounts shows it is managed from inside the country, and that Mansour left Egypt legally years ago, is not wanted in any case, and obtained from the Interior Ministry itself an electronic criminal record certificate free of any convictions. It added that three of the six journalists underwent, about three years ago, an examination and investigation into their backgrounds following the arrest of a former colleague of theirs, and that the relevant authorities afterward informed the platform that no connection of theirs to a political group or receipt of funding had been established, and that the journalists receive ordinary salaries under employment contracts and official proof of income paid through the Egyptian banking system.
On Friday night, October 2, a news item appeared on the Al-Masry Al-Youm website dated Thursday, October 1, saying that the Supreme State Security Prosecution had decided to detain “6 defendants among those running the Matsda2sh page” for fifteen days, without a case number or the text of a charge. Hossam Bahgat, director of the Egyptian Initiative, denied the item’s accuracy after contacting the head of the Supreme State Security Prosecution, and Iman Awf, a member of the Journalists Syndicate board and rapporteur of the Freedoms Committee, said the prosecution had denied to the Syndicate delegation that it had conducted any investigation with the six up to that point. The website did not delete the item, and its managing editor did not respond to Zawia3’s questions about its source and date.
On the same Friday evening, writer Abdel Rahim Ali, in a phone intervention on the program “Al-Hekaya” presented by Amr Adib on the MBC Masr channel, aired audio recordings whose source and the way he obtained them he did not specify, which he said belonged to Mansour, and said he possessed about five hundred calls of his, and that Matsda2sh belongs to a non-profit American organization headquartered in New York. Article 57 of the Constitution guarantees the inviolability of correspondence and telephone conversations, and does not permit monitoring them or accessing them except by a reasoned judicial order and for a specified period, and Article 309 bis of the Penal Code punishes with imprisonment anyone who records or transmits conversations that took place in a private place without the consent of their parties.
Case 8083: Charges and Investigations
Mohamed Ashraf Abu Omeira appeared before the Supreme State Security Prosecution at ten o’clock on the evening of Saturday, October 3, in the first appearance of one of the platform’s journalists before an investigating authority. Islam Salama, lawyer for the platform’s journalists at the Egyptian Initiative, tells Zawia3 that the prosecution questioned Abu Omeira alone for about ten consecutive hours until eight o’clock on Sunday morning, and leveled three charges against him: joining a terrorist group, publishing and broadcasting false news and data, and using an account on a social media website, then decided to detain him for fifteen days in Case No. 8083 of 2026 (Supreme State Security). The Initiative said the prosecution’s questions revolved around a number of reports published on the platform, the mechanism for choosing its topics, and the purpose of publishing them, and that the defense team requested that he be taken to the hospital because he suffers from chronic illnesses, so the prosecution allowed him to obtain his medications.
On the evening of Sunday, October 4, the other five journalists appeared before the prosecution, which questioned them for more than ten hours without allowing them to meet privately with their lawyers, according to the Egyptian Initiative. The Initiative reported on October 5, citing defense lawyers, including the Journalists Syndicate’s lawyers, that most of the journalists recorded before the prosecution that they had been subjected to various forms of torture and ill-treatment at various headquarters of the National Security Sector, in the days following their arrest and before they were brought before any judicial authority, and that they had been forced to record fabricated confessions. Some of the journalists requested referral to forensic medicine to document their injuries, and the prosecution decided to refer only one of them, according to the Initiative.
According to the urgent appeal that Amnesty International issued on October 16 under number MDE 12/1575/2026, the authorities forcibly disappeared the journalists for periods ranging from five to six days, during which they deprived them of contact with their families and lawyers. The organization quoted a member of the defense team as saying that the journalists stated before the prosecution that officers of the National Security Agency subjected them to torture inside the agency’s headquarters, through beatings, electric shocks, and threats to harm their families, while they were blindfolded, and some of them handcuffed behind their backs, to force them to read pre-prepared statements incriminating themselves in front of the camera, with the threat of further torture if they spoke about what had happened.
The defense team asked the prosecution to record the incidents of enforced disappearance, torture, and extracted confessions as official complaints and to investigate them, to refer the journalists to the Forensic Medicine Authority to document their injuries, and to hold those responsible accountable. The prosecution leveled against the six, according to the organization, charges including joining a terrorist group, namely the Muslim Brotherhood, “financing terrorism,” a charge whose punishment may reach the death penalty, using an online account to promote the ideas of a terrorist group, and publishing “false news.” The organization said the investigations covered the platform’s staff, its editorial decisions, and its methods of verifying information, as well as the journalists’ personal backgrounds and political and religious opinions, and that the detainees explained during questioning that their work is based on reviewing information, including information issued by official bodies.
On October 7, the Public Prosecution issued a statement announcing the pretrial detention of the six pending investigation, and said that Matsda2sh operated as a media committee affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, run by members abroad and staffed by people inside Egypt, and relied on the “confession” of one of the journalists, and on bank transfers and electronic correspondence. The statement stated that one of the defendants admitted that he and others had joined the group’s “media committee,” and that the rest denied joining it, except one who said he had previously joined it and separated from it before working at the platform. The prosecution said that none of the six bore visible injuries, and that the forensic medical examination of three of them showed no injuries or traces of violence.
The Egyptian Initiative responded to the prosecution’s statement in ten points, and asked: if the accusations are based on publishing rumors and false news, where is the news item or report that the platform published that can be proven false or fabricated? It said the statement did not identify a single item of this kind, that the prosecution did not confront any of the journalists with a published item during about thirty hours of questioning each, and that it presented legitimate working relationships and routine editorial correspondence as evidence of criminal activity. The Initiative criticized holding the journalists for five days before bringing them before the investigating authority, and ignoring their complaints of torture, and said the prosecution must identify the imminent terrorist threat that required depriving them of their right to appear before a judicial authority within 24 hours of their arrest.
On the evening of Tuesday, October 13, the Supreme State Security Prosecution decided to renew the detention of the six for an additional fifteen days, and the Egyptian Initiative said in its statement issued the following day that the prosecution renewed the detention without confronting them with a single piece of evidence, and called on the Public Prosecutor to investigate the complaints of torture and ill-treatment, to release the six immediately and drop the charges against them, affirming that their journalistic work is protected by the Constitution and the law. The authorities are holding five of the six in Badr 1 Prison, and Mohamed Ashraf Abu Omeira in Tenth of Ramadan 4 Prison, according to Amnesty International, which said it had documented harsh detention conditions in Badr Prison, including permanent camera surveillance, constant lighting, degrading searches, and restrictions on visits and correspondence.
Eight Years of Fact-Checking
Matsda2sh was founded in April 2018 as a platform for fact-checking and combating disinformation using open-source tools, and the late investigative journalist Mohamed Abu Al-Gheit took part in laying its first foundations alongside Abdelrahman Mansour, one of the administrators of the “We Are All Khaled Said” page during the January 25, 2011 revolution. More than one million people follow its Facebook page, while the authorities block its website inside Egypt. An academic study published in 2021 on political fact-checking in the Middle East included it among six major Arab platforms, alongside “Misbar,” “Fatabyyano,” and “Saheeh Masr,” and found that it ranked second among the six in the number of times it checked statements by Arab presidents and rulers. Its methodology page, published since 2018, states that it returns to primary sources, uses reverse image search, and resorts to open-source tools, including geolocation and flight tracking, when the topic requires it.
The platform displays on its website works including checking government data on the numbers of refugees and migrants in Egypt and on spending on health and education, an investigation that tracked a tanker operating as a floating fuel storage tank off the Yemeni port of Ras Isa, and the network of companies and businessmen that supplies it with fuel for the Houthi group, monitoring through satellite imagery of construction works on the Yemeni island of Mayun overlooking the Bab al-Mandab Strait, an exclusive report that the Court of Cassation Prosecution recommended upholding the state’s recovery of 29 plots of land in Saint Catherine’s Monastery, and an analysis of the electricity sector’s loans and the financial performance of the National Media Authority.
The platform participates in Arabi Facts Hub, a non-profit research organization that studies Arabic-language disinformation online, and which publishes on its website a list of twenty-four partners in ten Arab countries, among them Matsda2sh and Saheeh Masr from Egypt, and more than 42,000 compiled fact-checks. Abdel Rahim Ali said in his television intervention that the platform belongs to the non-profit organization Open Transformation Lab, headquartered in New York, which is an organization publicly registered with the US tax authority since 2018, publishes its annual returns, and declares that its mission is to provide reliable content that counters disinformation and propaganda about events in the Middle East.
The platform had previously been subjected to a security campaign in August 2023, when a security force raided at dawn the home of its editor Karim Asaad in Al-Shorouk City, assaulted him and his wife and threatened them through their son, according to what the platform and the Journalists Syndicate’s Freedoms Committee documented at the time, then entered Matsda2sh’s accounts and deleted two posts about the identity of Egyptian passengers on a private plane seized by the Zambian authorities in Lusaka carrying about six million dollars, gold bars, and weapons. The authorities released Asaad within less than two days after the Syndicate’s intervention, and Mansour told the Associated Press that National Security investigators at the time released two editors after thirty-six hours without charge, after they found no connection between them and the Muslim Brotherhood. After that incident, the platform offered the security authorities to legalize its status officially as a journalistic platform and to establish a headquarters bringing its team together inside Egypt, and received no response, according to a journalistic source familiar with the file.
The Syndicate Between Negotiation and Sit-In
On the night following the raids, the Journalists Syndicate’s Freedoms Committee issued a statement declaring its full solidarity with Abdullah Qadri and Mohamed Ashraf, describing their arrest and the search of one of their homes as “a violation of the law and the Constitution,” and demanding their release and that of all those detained in opinion and publishing cases. The committee’s rapporteur, Iman Awf, said that adding new journalists to the list of detainees “disregards the law and the Constitution entirely,” and summed up the Syndicate’s position on the six with the phrase: “There is no difference between a Syndicate member and a non-member.”
On September 30, Journalists Syndicate head Khaled Al-Balshy filed a report with the Public Prosecutor and a complaint with the Interior Minister, in which he demanded the immediate disclosure of the six’s places of detention and the circumstances of their arrest, enabling them to have legal representation, and their release on the Syndicate’s guarantee with its pledge that they would appear before any investigation, and pointed to the arrest’s violation of Article 54 of the Constitution. On the same day, Al-Balshy sent a letter to the prosecution requesting that the Syndicate be informed of the date of any investigation so that its representatives could attend it. On the morning of Thursday, October 1, a delegation including board members Mahmoud Kamel and Iman Awf and four lawyers from the legal department went to the prosecution’s headquarters in the Fifth Settlement, submitted official requests to attend the investigations, and stayed there all day without anyone informing it of an investigation being conducted, a report being drawn up, or a case number.
On the morning of Saturday, October 3, the Syndicate submitted two requests to the Public Prosecutor and the Attorney General of the Supreme State Security Prosecution to clarify what the Al-Masry Al-Youm website had published, and relied on Article 69 of Journalists Syndicate Law No. 76 of 1970, which obliges the prosecution to notify the Syndicate board of any complaint against a journalist related to their work a suitable time before the investigation, and grants the head of the Syndicate or his delegate the right to attend the investigation, and on Articles 5 and 53, under which the Syndicate defends every actual practitioner of the profession, whether registered or a trainee. Of the six, one journalist is registered in the Syndicate’s rolls, and the other five are trainees or unregistered. Al-Balshy tells Zawia3 that the Syndicate’s legal memorandum is based on the journalist’s personal responsibility for the material they publish, and on the guarantees established by the Syndicate law, that the Syndicate insists on expanding union protection to include unregistered journalists, and that Article 35 of its law contains provisions related to training and publishing before registration.
On the afternoon of the same day, dozens of journalists took part in a symbolic sit-in inside the Syndicate’s headquarters on Abdel Khalek Tharwat Street, in response to a call that Matsda2sh addressed to journalists, Syndicate members and non-members. Police closed the roads leading to the headquarters, set up checkpoints to search passersby, and asked some of them to show their identity cards, and Syndicate officials asked those present to remain in the main lobby and not to stand on the steps. The sit-in participants raised banners bearing the phrases “Journalism Is Not a Crime,” “Down With Journalism by Instructions,” and “Freedom for Journalists,” and the Syndicate board, in the presence of Al-Balshy and eight of its members, called for an emergency meeting the following Monday, and those present agreed to continue the sit-in inside the Syndicate. Al-Balshy tells Zawia3 that the Syndicate is negotiating with “the relevant authorities” regarding the six, and declines to disclose the details of the negotiation. Iman Awf tells Zawia3 that all options are on the table before the Syndicate board and the general assembly, in the paths of negotiation and escalation alike, and that the Syndicate and its board are in permanent session.
On the evening of October 14, the Syndicate organized a solidarity evening in its lobby, which included an exhibition of cartoons in solidarity with imprisoned journalists, among them cartoonist Ashraf Omar, and photos taken by imprisoned journalists, among them Haidar Kandil, and a discussion session in which journalists Alaa Al-Attar, Medhat Al-Zahed, Gamal Fahmy, and Karem Mahmoud recalled their experiences with imprisonment and the battles over press laws, while security personnel in plain clothes and uniform were deployed in the streets surrounding the headquarters. Those present agreed to organize periodic solidarity evenings, with the open sit-in continuing to demand the release of the Matsda2sh journalists and all journalists imprisoned in opinion and publishing cases. After the October 13 decision, the Syndicate renewed its demand for the release of the six, and affirmed that it is taking legal and union measures to defend all members of the team, including the five unregistered ones.
From Rasha Azab to Lina Attalah
One day after the Saturday sit-in, journalist Rasha Azab wrote on the morning of Sunday, October 4, that an official summons had arrived at her family’s home to appear before the Supreme State Security Prosecution on Monday, October 5, for questioning in Case No. 8025 of 2026, a case that differs in its number from the Matsda2sh case, and commented: “The message is clear, and my response is clear.” Azab was among the participants in the sit-in. According to Amnesty International, the prosecution questioned her about a social media post criticizing the Interior Ministry, leveled against her a charge of promoting terrorist acts, then released her on bail of 10,000 Egyptian pounds (about $207).
Azab has been subjected to repeated prosecutions over the past years, as an economic appellate court convicted her on August 21, 2022, of insult and defamation and fined her 10,000 Egyptian pounds (about $207) over tweets in solidarity with survivors of sexual violence. Amnesty International said in December 2024 that she had been subjected since October 2023 to repeated surveillance and threats, including being followed by unknown men and receiving warnings through intermediaries that security agencies would arrest her, and the Journalists Syndicate submitted a formal complaint to the Public Prosecutor on her behalf in November 2024.
On October 19, the Mada Masr website announced that the Supreme State Security Prosecution had summoned its editor-in-chief, Lina Attalah, to appear before it today, Wednesday, October 21, in Case No. 9072 of 2026 (Supreme State Security), without clarifying the reasons for the summons or the nature of the charges. The summons comes about 14 months after the same prosecution questioned Attalah on August 4, 2025, in Case No. 6182 of 2025, over a report the website published titled “Badr 3.. Where Prisoners Face Slow Death” on detainees’ complaints about their detention conditions, which included a leaked letter attributed to former Alexandria deputy governor Hassan Al-Brens. The Interior Ministry denied the authenticity of the letter and described it as fabricated, and the prosecution leveled against Attalah the charges of broadcasting false news and using a website without a license, questioned her about the report’s sources, then released her on a financial guarantee of 30,000 Egyptian pounds (about $621). Attalah denied the charges, and affirmed the website’s commitment to professional standards and its keenness to present different points of view, including government responses.
The Cairo Appeals Prosecution had previously summoned Attalah in November 2023 in Case No. 22 of 2023, after the Supreme Council for Media Regulation’s decision to refer the website’s officials to the prosecution over a report on scenarios for displacing Palestinians from the Gaza Strip to Egypt, then leveled against her in February 2024 the charges of publishing false news and using a website without a license, and released her on bail of 5,000 Egyptian pounds (about $104). The website submitted two applications for a license in October 2018 and August 2020, according to the Association for Freedom of Thought and Expression, and the administrative judiciary rejected in 2023 its appeal against the decision to refuse the license, and the Supreme Council for Media Regulation announced in October 2023 blocking it for six months, despite its being blocked inside Egypt since 2017. Attalah and three female journalists from the website were questioned in September 2022 over a news item about allegations of financial irregularities within the “Mostaqbal Watan” party, and security forces arrested her in May 2020 while conducting a journalistic interview near the Tora prison complex, then the prosecution released her on bail.
Twenty-one Egyptian and international human rights organizations had demanded, in a joint statement issued in August 2025 following the questioning of Attalah, dropping the cases open against her and against the website’s journalists, stopping the use of the Supreme State Security Prosecution and counter-terrorism procedures in press and publishing cases, and lifting the blocking of independent journalistic websites, including Zawia3.
Solidarity Crosses Borders
The International Federation of Journalists, which represents more than 600,000 journalists around the world, announced in a statement issued on October 2 that it was joining its member, the Egyptian Journalists Syndicate, in expressing concern over the fate of the six, demanding their immediate and unconditional release, and an end to the crackdown on the press. Its General Secretary, Anthony Bellanger, said the authorities arrested the colleagues for one reason, doing their job of informing citizens of the truth and protecting the public information space from disinformation and propaganda, and described them as a model of journalism as a public good. Sara Qudah, regional director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, said that the arrest of six journalists from a single newsroom and their apparent disappearance constitute a grave escalation in the campaign against independent journalism in Egypt, that five of them not being registered with the Syndicate does not justify their detention, and that any dispute over licensing is resolved through transparent administrative or judicial procedures.
On September 30, more than fifty Egyptian, regional, and international human rights and journalistic organizations signed a joint appeal, hosted by the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy, for the immediate release of the platform’s team, and the number of signatories later rose to more than eighty, among them the Committee to Protect Journalists, the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies, and Article 19, and Egyptian organizations that signed from inside the country: the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, the Association for Freedom of Thought and Expression, the Egyptian Front for Human Rights, the Egyptian Human Rights Forum, El Nadeem Center, and the Egyptian Commission for Rights and Freedoms. Article 19 called in its statement for an end to all forms of targeting of the platform.
From Washington, Democratic Representatives Don Beyer and Suzan DelBene, co-chairs of the Egypt Human Rights Caucus in Congress, called for the immediate and unconditional release of the six. Members of the European Parliament expressed their concern over the pace of the arrests and the conditions of incommunicado detention, and called on the Egyptian judiciary to keep the defense and the families informed of the course of the case. The Lebanese Union of Journalists, the National Union of Tunisian Journalists, the Syrian Journalists Association, the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate, and the Sudanese Journalists Syndicate signed a statement declaring their solidarity with the Egyptian Journalists Syndicate and its actions, and said that targeting journalists affects society’s right to know.
Domestically, dozens of journalists signed, hours before the Interior Ministry’s statement was issued, a statement demanding the release of the six, guaranteeing their safety, and disclosing their whereabouts, and Syndicate board member Mahmoud Kamel told Agence France-Presse that the only crime the detainees committed was doing their work of research, analysis, and uncovering facts. The Constitution Party issued a statement in which it described press freedom as an inherent constitutional right and a guarantee of society’s right to knowledge and accountability, and the Civil Democratic Movement expressed its concern over the detention of the entire editorial team, and declared its solidarity with the Syndicate’s position, its head’s report, and the platform’s statement.
On Sunday, October 18, eight Egyptian and Arab journalism platforms launched a joint newsroom to check the information and figures presented by the government’s “Egypt Forum 2026” throughout its days from October 19 to 24, under the slogan “Until They Return.. Verification Continues,” and said the initiative is a solidarity event during which they occupy the place of the six colleagues until they return to their work, and called on newspapers, websites, and journalists in the Arab region to join it, or to follow the forum’s sessions and check what is stated in them, or to share its content.
Amnesty International called in its appeal for the immediate and unconditional release of the six and dropping the charges against them, protecting them from torture and ill-treatment, guaranteeing the confidentiality of their communication with their lawyers, regular contact with their families, and their access to health care, preventing any reprisals against them or their relatives for reporting the violations, and conducting an immediate, independent, and impartial investigation into the allegations of torture and enforced disappearance.
Detention Figures and the Context of the Campaign
The Committee to Protect Journalists says Egypt holds 25 journalists, places it among the countries with high numbers of detained journalists, and in third place in allegations of torture and beating of journalists in prisons since 1992, after Iran and Israel. The Egyptian Initiative estimated the number of journalists detained in connection with their work in Egypt at twenty-six after the September campaign, while the LabourStart campaign page refers to 24 journalists imprisoned alongside the six. Egypt ranked 169th out of 180 countries in the 2026 World Press Freedom Index issued by Reporters Without Borders, after ranking 170th in 2025.
The raids came hours before the date that had been set for the entry into force of the new Criminal Procedure Code, Law No. 174 of 2025, on October 1, which the government presented as a remedy for the issue of pretrial detention, with seven alternatives to detention instead of three and controls on its duration. On September 30, the House of Representatives approved definitively, in an extraordinary session, a draft law submitted by MP Hisham Al-Hosari postponing the application of the law for a full year, to begin working with it on October 1, 2027, and the Constitutional and Legislative Affairs Committee justified the postponement by the need to complete the organizational, institutional, technical, and human requirements.
The security campaign was preceded by five weeks by a message that Minister of State for Information Dia Rashwan addressed to journalists on August 20, which he described as a “necessary venting,” in which he called for opening space for diverse opinions, and announced preparations for an annual media meeting on December 3, 2026, in implementation of presidential directives. On September 21, Rashwan met with editors-in-chief of licensed websites and proposed a “unified entity” for news websites, and the Syndicate’s Secretary General Gamal Abdel Rahim responded that any parallel syndicate violates Article 77 of the Constitution, and the Syndicate’s deputy head Mohamed Al-Garhi submitted a memorandum demanding that the minister be transferred to the non-practicing roll, before the minister denied what had been understood from his words. At the October 3 sit-in, journalists asked about Rashwan’s position on the fate of the six, and neither the Syndicate head nor any board member commented.
On the very day the Interior Ministry’s statement was issued, Reuters reported that US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, in a letter dated September 21, waived $320 million of military aid to Egypt from human rights conditions on national security grounds, and a responsible Egyptian source welcomed the decision.
The term of the latest decision to renew the detention of the six ends in late October, while the defense team continues to demand an investigation into the torture complaints, and the Syndicate continues its open sit-in and its efforts to secure their release. Participation in the LabourStart campaign is possible through its page, by entering a name and email address, with two optional fields for union and country, then sending the message in its proposed text or after editing it.
