In today's brief:
A new postponement in the case of Mada Masr’s editor-in-chief and a request to recuse the judge, a UN position on the detention of the Matsadaqsh journalists, one terrorism circuit between European lists and a new postponement for Aisha El-Shater, and new charges over belief.
On public affairs: the transport minister before MPs after the Ayyat train crash, employees removed on security grounds, the debt target and its new date, the austerity decree against new contracts and raises, an official reassurance on fertilizer, the collapsed building in Port Said, and what was said about Egyptian forces in Saudi Arabia and about Gaza.
Lina Attalah: a request to recuse the judge who shut Mada Masr
The New Cairo Misdemeanour Court postponed today, Wednesday 11 November, the first session of the retrial of Lina Attalah, editor-in-chief of Mada Masr, in case No. 3219 of 2024, to 18 November, “to consider the grounds of the defence’s request to recuse the court”, according to the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights. This is the case in which an in-absentia verdict sentenced her to one year in prison, a fine of EGP 2 million ($37.3k) and closure of the site, on charges of publishing false news and running a website without a licence. According to the Initiative, the retrial is heard by Judge Mohamed Mubarak, the same judge who ruled on 27 October to fine her EGP 3 million ($55.9k) and close the site in case No. 11743 of 2026.
The Egyptian authorities did not respond to requests for comment on the case, and the one-week postponement allows the Court of Appeals to rule on the recusal request. In a paper on the 27 October session, the Egyptian Front for Human Rights said, citing the defence’s account, that the court refused to record in the session minutes Attalah’s objection to the appointment of a lawyer for her and her request to recuse the judge, and rejected the defence’s request to add the licence file, the original rejection decision and the notification papers.
According to the Egyptian Initiative, the case was referred and the in-absentia verdict issued “without notifying Attalah or the Journalists Syndicate for more than two years”, although she attended the investigation in February 2024 and was released at the time on EGP 5,000 ($93) bail, and she only learned of the verdict on the day she was detained, 27 October, as Zawia3 reported. A week after the 18 November session, on 25 November, the Misdemeanour Appeals Court begins hearing the appeal against the closure ruling, meaning the journalist faces the same judge in two cases and three sessions within two weeks, over a licensing file in which the Supreme Council for Media Regulation said on 7 November that those without a licence are “a very limited proportion”, as yesterday’s brief noted.
Matsadaqsh: a UN office demands release, and the defence says complaints were not investigated
On the same day the Supreme State Security Prosecution renewed the detention of the six journalists working for the Matsadaqsh platform for 15 days for the third time, the spokesperson for the UN human rights office, Thameen Al-Kheetan, said in Geneva yesterday, Tuesday 10 November: “We are witnessing widening assaults on press freedom by Egyptian authorities”, adding that “these alarming developments must end immediately”. The office called for the release of the six and the dropping of charges arising from their legitimate journalistic work, for them to be given in the meantime confidential access to their lawyers, contact with their families and health care, for a prompt investigation into “all allegations of torture, ill-treatment or forced confessions”, and for the measures taken against Matsadaqsh and Mada Masr to be reversed.
The journalists are Mohamed Ashraf Abu Omeira, Abdullah Qadri, Islam Barakat, Omar Hilal, Mohamed Adel and Mohamed Mahmoud, held in case No. 8083 of 2026 (Supreme State Security). Lawyer Nabih El-Ganadi, of the defence team, said the prosecution did not investigate the complaints of torture and enforced disappearance seriously, that the officers complained against were not summoned, that referring the journalists to forensic medicine alone does not settle the matter, and that one of them complained of a cold cell with open windows in Badr 1 prison.
The office’s statement follows one issued by 13 UN rapporteurs and experts, published by the Egyptian Initiative on 8 November, in which they called for the journalists’ immediate release. Zawia3 found no official Egyptian response to either statement. In its statement of 7 October, the Public Prosecution had attributed to the defendants “highlighting shortcomings, and nothing else, in state institutions”, and the journalists were arrested on 28 and 29 September and only appeared before the prosecution five days later.
The Second Terrorism Circuit: 35 European entities on the lists, and Aisha El-Shater to January
The Official Gazette (Al-Waqa’i’ Al-Misriyya) published, in issue No. 250 of yesterday, Tuesday 10 November, the decision of the Second Circuit of the Cairo Criminal Court, sitting in Badr and chaired by Judge Wagdy Mohamed Abdel Moneim, to place 35 entities on the list of terrorist entities for five years, in case No. 11108 of 2026 (Supreme State Security), among them the Council of European Muslims, Musulmans de France, the Muslim Association of Britain, the European Council for Fatwa and Research, the European Institute of Human Sciences, and associations in Switzerland, Sweden, Italy, Spain, Ireland and Poland. The decision also included, according to a supplementary issue of the gazette, placing 36 people on the list of terrorists, among them Ibrahim Farouk El-Zayat, Anas Altikriti and Ahmed al-Rawi.
Press coverage of the decision did not include the evidence it relied on, and published only nine of the 36 people’s names, although the text of the decision published in the gazette contained the detailed lists, and what was published did not say whether any of those listed had been notified or allowed to defend themselves. The listing request number differed between sources: one cited request No. 10 of 2026 for the entities and decision No. 9 of 2026 for the individuals, and another cited request No. 1 of 2026.
On the same day, the same circuit, chaired by the same judge, adjourned case No. 21582 of 2024, known as the “Tagamoa cell”, in which rights defender Aisha Khairat El-Shater is tried as first defendant with 26 others, to 1 January for the prosecution’s pleading. On 26 September the court had set the 10 November session for pleadings, after adjournments from 16 December 2025 to 10 February 2026, then the sessions of 26 July and 26 September. The referral order accuses her of incitement in the period from 30 May 2019 to 5 February 2020, a period that falls entirely within her detention, ongoing since 31 October 2018, as yesterday’s brief reported. The Egyptian Front for Human Rights had criticised this circuit’s conduct on 15 October.
Sherif Wagih: four days between his home and the arrest report
The Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights said today, Wednesday 11 November, that Sherif Wagih Fahmy faces charges over his religious views online, in case No. 26308 of 2026 (Montaza misdemeanours), of broadcasting news of extremist ideas insulting religions with intent to harm national unity, and of using social media to do so. According to his family, which Wagih himself stated in the prosecution’s investigation record, two men in plain clothes took him from his home in Alexandria on 5 October after saying they were from the gas company, while the arrest report says he was arrested in the street on 9 October, the day he appeared before the prosecution. The prosecution asked him during the investigation, according to the Initiative, about his understanding of religious commitment.
The Initiative demands his immediate release, which indicates he remains in detention, and Zawia3 found no official explanation for the gap between the two dates. The Initiative has documented the prosecution of at least 113 people since the start of last year for atheism, non-religiousness or holding beliefs that are not dominant or not officially recognised, days after the State Security Prosecution released 19 Shia Muslims arrested over their beliefs.
The transport minister before MPs: "We admit there are mistakes" and $5.1bn in loans
Transport Minister Lt. Gen. Kamel al-Wazir told the House Transport Committee yesterday, Tuesday 10 November, at an urgent meeting on the Ayyat train collision, that “the total value of the railways’ external loans, if we count them in full, is $5.1 billion”, of which $3.046 billion has been drawn and $2.058 billion has not, adding: “We have repaid so far $870 million from the railways’ own revenues”, with $2.175 billion still to be repaid. The minister also presented domestic loans of about EGP 64 billion ($1.19bn), and said 11 projects worth $1.065 billion had been completed and 12 worth $4.039 billion were under way.
The minister said: “We admit there are mistakes, and there will still be mistakes”, and “the private sector manages better than the government”, and announced compensation of EGP 100,000 ($1,865) for the family of each person killed and EGP 50,000 ($932) for each injured person, the criminalisation of drivers deliberately switching off the automatic train control system, and the dismissal of any employee proven to use drugs or to be negligent in safety procedures. He denied having ordered the system switched off “except once”, to run a delayed train at 15 km per hour to the nearest station in Luxor, and said of the Ayyat train: “I don’t know why the Ayyat train employee switched off the automatic control system; the prosecution is the one to say.” In March 2021, after the Sohag train collision, the minister had said: “I can’t work without ATC technology”, as yesterday’s brief noted.
MP Khaled Mostafa Abdelaziz asked about the World Bank loan for upgrading signals, saying it was approved in March 2021 at $440 million, then cut to $421 million, that only about $200 million had been drawn after five years, with the project due to be completed in 2027, and said, according to the information available to him, that the Bank had raised the loan’s risk rating over concerns about internal control systems, asking where this money had gone. The World Bank had announced approval of the project on 5 March 2021 to improve safety, and its implementation reports showed, according to a report published in September, that its main safety indicator had not moved in five years. In what was published about the meeting, Zawia3 found no answer from the minister to this question.
The committee concluded with recommendations, among them reviewing all automatic control and signalling systems, a central alarm when the system is disabled, barring any train from running with the system disabled, an inventory of railway accidents over five years, and measuring the effect of spending on reducing accidents. The published recommendations did not refer to political responsibility for the crash, and confined themselves to a general call to “strengthen transparency and accountability”, while the interpellation request submitted by MP Reham Abdel Nabi awaits the plenary, adjourned until 16 November, as yesterday’s brief reported.
262 employees "not cleared by security"
At the same meeting, answering MP Mostafa Bakry, the minister said that 262 railway workers had been removed over security notes: “We let them all go, and we no longer have anyone who isn’t cleared by security”, adding that new hires undergo psychological, medical and security tests. The minister did not say, according to what was published, which body carried out the security vetting, what the notes contained, whether those removed have a right to appeal, or whether any of them had a connection to the Ayyat crash.
The talk of security removals came at a meeting on a crash in which the Public Prosecution said the technical examination showed the driver of train No. 134 had disabled the automatic control system, and that the station’s controller and stationmaster had failed to monitor the control panel, according to the statements of the head of the Central Administration for Signals and Communications. At the same meeting, the minister said that “state employees’ salaries satisfy no one”, that engineers’ incentives are EGP 3,000 or 6,000 and other workers’ incentives reach EGP 2,000, and the committee’s recommendations included an item on organising shifts and rest so workers are not exposed to “strain or exhaustion”.
The debt target: two ratios and two dates in 19 days
Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly reviewed today, Wednesday 11 November, with Finance Minister Ahmed Kouchouk, the recommendations of “Egypt Forum 2026” on budget-sector debt, and a path to cut public debt to “about 69.5% of GDP by 2030”. The minister said the debt-to-GDP ratio fell “by about 14%” between June 2023 and June 2026, and that budget-sector external debt fell by about 3.9% of GDP in fiscal year 2025/2026, and the prime minister ordered a detailed plan with tasks for each ministry to be presented to the president.
Nineteen days earlier, on 23 October, Kouchouk said the target was to cut budget-sector debt to “below 70% by next June”, meaning June 2027, “compared with about 82.9% now and 96% in June 2023”. On 17 December 2025, the minister targeted cutting it to “below 80% by June 2026”, while the ratio was about 82.9% in October by his own figure. Today’s statement did not say whether the 69.5% ratio by 2030 measures the same debt that was targeted to fall below 70% by June 2027, nor the reason for the different date, nor the value of the debt in pounds, nor the cost of its interest.
Yesterday, Tuesday 10 November, Minister of Investment and Foreign Trade Mohamed Farid discussed with the Morgan Stanley group in Washington “innovative financing mechanisms based on future cash flows in the petroleum, gas and tourism sectors”, alongside redeveloping the financial and investment structures of state-owned companies and international offerings. The statement did not give the size of the proposed financing, the flows that would be pledged for it, or whether it would be counted in the debt ratio the government aims to cut.
The austerity decree in the Official Gazette, and 26 projects the next day
Prime Minister’s Decree No. 3530 of 2026 on rationalising spending was published in the Official Gazette, issue No. 45 bis (A) of 9 November, and applies for three extendable months to bodies within the state budget, including local administration, and to economic public authorities. The decree cuts electricity and lighting use by 20%, fuel in government vehicles by at least 30%, slows fuel-intensive national projects for at least three months, bars any decision raising expenditure except after prior coordination with the Finance Ministry and presentation to the cabinet, prohibits contracting on newly listed projects until 30 June 2027, and exempts debt interest and instalments and “Hayah Karima” projects from the austerity.
The next day, yesterday, Tuesday 10 November, the cabinet approved the 14 October decision of the ministerial engineering committee to award 26 projects to companies, for the Housing and Transport ministries and the Public Prosecution, allowed the Education Ministry to contract with Horizon publishing to print and supply French-language textbooks in estimated quantities exceeding 500,000 copies, and approved other contracting requests under Article 78 of Law No. 182 of 2018, including buildings for Cairo and Arish universities. The statement did not give the value of the 26 projects, the companies awarded them, or whether they are among the newly listed projects the decree bars contracting on. At the same meeting the cabinet approved a presidential decree on World Bank development policy financing in its second phase, worth $1 billion, signed on 1 November.
Today, the prime minister met several ministers and the heads of the Armed Forces Financial Affairs Authority and the Armed Forces Engineering Authority, and the meeting stressed, according to the cabinet spokesperson, the priority of completing existing projects, especially those “nearing completion”, without the statement giving the number of these projects or the cost of completing them.
Raises and hiring without figures in austerity week
The prime minister, the finance minister and Higher Education Minister Abdelaziz Konsowa agreed today, Wednesday 11 November, on “raises covering all faculty members”, in addition to incentives announced last week, with details to be announced at a press conference on Monday 16 November. On the same day, the Central Agency for Organisation and Administration announced “President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s approval to appoint 33,977 faculty members” and their assistants at public universities and Al-Azhar University over five years, with annual numbers to be set in coordination with the universities.
Neither statement gave the value of the raises, their cost or source of funding, or the size of the current faculty shortage, and the agency said only that the number was based on a survey of needs. The two announcements come two days after the publication of the austerity decree, which bars any decision raising expenditure except after prior coordination with the Finance Ministry and presentation to the cabinet, and the cabinet had approved the draft decree last week, exempting pre-university education from project postponements and not listing higher education among the exemptions, as yesterday’s brief noted.
Fertilizer: "safe and sufficient for several months"
The Cabinet Media Centre cited the Agriculture Ministry today, Wednesday 11 November, as saying the stock of subsidised nitrogen fertilizer in agricultural cooperatives’ warehouses is “safe and sufficient” for several months, at about 7.8 million bags, with “no shortage at all”, in response to “claims” of cuts in the subsidised fertilizer allocated to farmers as a result of cuts in natural gas supplies to factories. The statement did not address the gas cut itself, which Abu Qir and MOPCO announced in stock exchange disclosures, and Zawia3 found no statement on it from the Petroleum Ministry, as yesterday’s brief noted.
Assuming 50 kilograms per bag, 7.8 million bags equal about 390,000 tonnes, close to the 400,000 tonnes Agriculture Minister Alaa Farouk said on 8 November the cooperatives hold, out of winter-season needs of about 900,000 tonnes. In other words, the stock the statement described as sufficient for several months is less than half the needs of the whole season by the minister’s figure. The statement did not mention factory output after the gas cut was raised to 33%, or export commitments. On 29 August, the Petroleum and Agriculture ministries had described reports of cuts in gas allocations as “untrue in whole and in detail”.
Port Said: an unlicensed building and evacuation and repair orders never carried out
The Administrative Prosecution’s review of the file of the building that partly collapsed at the corner of Azmi and Ahmed Maher streets in Port Said’s Al-Sharq district, killing two people and seriously injuring a child, revealed that it is “an old building for which no building permit was issued”, that the authorities had issued orders to remove the third floor, repair the rest of the building and temporarily evacuate residents, and that a police report was filed against the owners for not carrying out the evacuation and repair orders. The prosecution questioned the director of building regulation in Al-Sharq district and an inspector from the governorate’s internal audit and governance department, and asked for a committee of specialists to prepare an engineering and technical report on the causes of the collapse and administrative responsibility, to be received today.
What was published about the investigation did not say how long the orders went unenforced, why the administrative authority did not carry out the removal order, or how many similar unenforced orders exist in the district. In the same district, on 20 November 2023, another building collapsed and caused injuries, and Governor Maj. Gen. Adel El-Ghadban ordered a “full report” at the time, and Zawia3 found no announced plan for old buildings in the governorate since.
Forces in Saudi Arabia: "sensitive sites" and MPs without information
Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty said in his interview with France 24, according to a report published today, Wednesday 11 November, that Egyptian forces in Saudi Arabia have “mainly defensive objectives to defend sensitive sites, including holy sites and others”, and that their presence came “at the request of our brothers and sisters in Saudi Arabia” and “is being strengthened”. The minister did not give the number of forces, their date of arrival or their cost.
Several MPs said they had not received any details from the army or the government on the nature or size of the deployment, and it is unclear whether parliament knew of the forces’ presence before it voted on the authorisation on 26 October. There was no public Saudi comment, and Zawia3 found no statement from the military spokesman. In his interview with France 24, the minister said he was confident US military aid to Egypt would continue, responding to a call by US senator-elect for Michigan Abdul El-Sayed to end military aid to countries in the region. Article 152 of the constitution requires the approval of two-thirds of the House of Representatives to send forces on a combat mission abroad, as yesterday’s brief reported.
Gaza: "the main problem" and 70,000 tents
Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty, in his interview with France 24 on the sidelines of the G7 meeting in Paris on Monday 9 November, described the disarmament of Hamas as “the main problem”, and said the first phase of the US president’s plan had not been fully implemented, citing aid shortages and daily Israeli “killings”. In his address to the G7 session on Middle East stability and food security, the minister spoke of “the catastrophic conditions in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and the restrictions Israel imposes on the entry of aid”, and rejected “using food as a tool of political pressure or as a weapon in conflicts”, citing Gaza and Sudan and their “severe repercussions for food supplies”.
Today, the health programmes director of the Palestine Red Crescent Society in Gaza, Bashar Murad, warned of worsening health conditions as about 70,000 tents flooded during the latest weather depression. Zawia3 found no official Egyptian figures for the number of trucks entering the Strip daily, after the minister acknowledged that the agreed minimum of about 600 trucks a day had not been reached, as yesterday’s brief noted. The ministry’s statement on his trilateral meeting in Paris with Qatar’s prime minister and foreign minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, and Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan made no reference to Egyptian forces in the kingdom.
Photos: Mada Masr editor-in-chief Lina Attalah, by Jennifer 8. Lee via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0); Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly, by Christophe Licoppe via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0); Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty, by Raimond Spekking via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).
