{"id":26256,"date":"2026-11-06T10:51:23","date_gmt":"2026-11-06T08:51:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/?p=26256"},"modified":"2026-11-06T10:51:23","modified_gmt":"2026-11-06T08:51:23","slug":"newsroom-experts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/newsroom-experts\/","title":{"rendered":"UN experts call for the immediate release of the six Matsadaash journalists"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Independent United Nations experts, in a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ohchr.org\/en\/press-releases\/2026\/11\/egypt-un-experts-condemn-arrest-disappearance-and-detention-entire-newsroom\">statement<\/a> issued in Geneva on Thursday 5 November 2026, called on the Egyptian authorities to immediately release six journalists from the team of the fact-checking platform Matsadaash, Mohamed Ashraf, Abdallah Qadry, Islam Barakat, Omar Helal, Mohamed Adel and Mohamed Mahmoud, and said they were arrested on 28 and 29 September, forcibly disappeared for five days, and denied access to lawyers.<\/p>\n<p>The experts said the journalists face terrorism-related charges that may carry the death penalty, although they do not meet the threshold of the &#8220;most serious crimes&#8221; under international law, and described their torture and ill-treatment as &#8220;an egregious example of a severe and relentless crackdown on independent voices&#8221;. They added that the prosecution of the platform&#8217;s team and the threats directed at its founder Abdelrahman Mansour, who lives outside Egypt, &#8220;are not isolated incidents&#8221;, and that the use of vague counter-terrorism provisions to prosecute journalists is incompatible with international human rights law.<\/p>\n<p>The Interior Ministry had <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hrw.org\/news\/2026\/10\/02\/egypt-authorities-arrest-entire-investigative-newsroom\">confirmed<\/a> the journalists&#8217; arrest on 1 October, saying they were suspected of preparing fabricated news and accusing the platform of links to the Muslim Brotherhood, which the platform denies. The six are held in pretrial detention in case No. 8083 of 2026 Supreme State Security, and the prosecution renewed their detention for 15 days on 13 October, according to the Egyptian <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ec-rf.net\/%d8%a7%d9%84%d9%85%d9%81%d9%88%d8%b6%d9%8a%d8%a9-%d8%a7%d9%84%d9%85%d8%b5%d8%b1%d9%8a%d8%a9-%d8%aa%d8%b1%d8%b5%d8%af-%d9%81%d9%8a-%d8%a7%d9%84%d8%b5%d8%ad%d8%a7%d9%81%d8%a9-%d8%a7%d9%84%d9%85%d8%b3\/\">Commission<\/a> for Rights and Freedoms.<\/p>\n<p class=\"z3b-credit\"><small>Photo: Yann Forget via <a href=\"https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File:Palais_des_nations.jpg\">Wikimedia Commons<\/a> (<a href=\"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-sa\/3.0\/\">CC BY-SA 3.0<\/a>)<\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>UN experts called for the immediate release of six Matsadaash journalists facing terrorism charges punishable by death, and condemned their disappearance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":26252,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20481],"tags":[21813,21814,20961,20490,10471,21812],"kateb":[710],"class_list":["post-26256","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-in-brief","tag-abdelrahman-mansour","tag-case-8083-of-2026","tag-jailed-journalists-egypt","tag-matsadaash","tag-state-security-prosecution","tag-un-experts","kateb-zawia3-com"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/newsroom-experts-en.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26256","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26256"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26256\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26288,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26256\/revisions\/26288"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26252"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26256"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26256"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26256"},{"taxonomy":"kateb","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/kateb?post=26256"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}