Al Jazeera journalist released after four years in remand detention

One of the few remaining Al Jazeera journalists held in Egyptian detention was released on Monday, his wife announced. 

Journalist Hisham Abdel Aziz was arrested in 2019 while returning to Egypt for a family vacation. He was charged with “joining a terrorist group” and has been held in remand detention for the past four years.

While Abdel Aziz’s release looked imminent last week, a technical error nearly derailed his exit from prison. 

Egyptian authorities began targeting the Qatari state news outlet Al Jazeera and started arresting its Cairo staff following the 2013 ouster of the Muslim Brotherhood from government, when the network assumed overtly critical coverage of the political situation in Egypt.

After years of hostility, Egypt began releasing detained journalists working for the Qatari network last year, coinciding with the rush to reconcile relations with Doha amid Cairo’s dire need for foreign currency investments.

Accelerating procedures to reopen Al Jazeera’s office in Cairo and releasing the channel’s imprisoned journalists were main points in top-level Egyptian-Qatari discussions over the past year, a government source previously told Mada Masr.

Abdel Aziz’s potential release first came to the fore on April 17, when Kamal Abu Eita and Tarek al-Awady, members of the Presidential Amnesty Committee, announced a list of 41 political detainees to be released, which included Abdel Aziz. The journalists’ family was confused at the time, however, as they had not been informed of his release, unlike the 40 other families, according to Abdel Aziz’s lawyer Mokhtar Mounir.

To clarify the matter, Journalists Syndicate chair Khaled al-Balshy told Mada Masr that he contacted Awady, only to be told that the list did not officially come from the amnesty committee and that the decision had come from beyond the committee, as Awady had been told by “his sources” in the Public Prosecutor's office.

However, Abdel Aziz’s wife said on Saturday that her husband's release order had been canceled and that he was still imprisoned pending Case 1956/2019. 

Egyptian authorities commonly add detainees to new cases to bypass the two-year maximum limit they can be held in remand detention for in one case. Balshy told Mada Masr that he later learned from Abdel Aziz’s family and his lawyer that the release decision was mistakenly issued for the first case he was detained in, Case 1356/2018, for which Abdel Aziz received a release order in December 2019, before being added to Case 1956/2019 on the same charge.

This required a correction of procedures and issuing a new release order for the second case.

Abdel Aziz worked as a technical producer for several programs on Al Jazeera before he was arrested in June 2019. He was granted release six months later and ordered to pay a LE20,000 fine. However, 20 days later, he was added to a new case on similar charges.

Writing by Ahmed Bakr.