Conditional release of journalists held in remand detention for 20 months appealed

Prosecutors filed an appeal against the conditional release of journalists Hamdy al-Zaeem and Mohamed Hassan, who have been held in remand detention for over 20 months, on Tuesday, according to Amal Abdel Aziz, Zaeem’s wife.

The conditional release orders, issued by a Cairo criminal court on Monday, required the journalists to sign in at a police station three times each week, Arabic Network for Human Rights Information lawyer Amr Abdel Samea told Mada Masr.

The lawyer added that if the appeal is rejected and the defendants are conditionally released, the police will determine the specifics of the precautionary measures — how long each journalist must spend at the police station during a sign-in, for example — at a later date.

A different criminal court ordered the release of Osama Gaber, another journalist implicated in the same case, on Saturday, according to Abdel Samea. Prosecutors appealed the decision, but the appeal was rejected and Gaber has since been released.

Police arrested Zaeem, who was working as a correspondent for London-based Al-Hayat newspaper and Al-Balad news website, alongside Gaber and Hassan from the vicinity of the Journalists Syndicate in downtown Cairo on September 26, 2016, while they were filming a report. They were taken to the nearby Qasr al-Nil Police Station.

The three journalists were physically assaulted by police and barred from communicating with their lawyers before they were taken to the central Cairo prosecution, where they were given a 15-day detention order pending investigations, according to the Association for Freedom of Thought and Expression (AFTE).

Prosecutors accused the journalists of being members of a terrorist organization, disseminating false news, undermining national unity and societal peace and calling for protests without permission. In January 2017, they were referred to the State Security Prosecution, pending further investigations.

Monday’s release order was not the first issued to the three journalists. On April 29, a criminal court ordered their conditional release. However, an appeal submitted by prosecution the next day was accepted, and their remand detention was extended by 45 days.

In recent months, there has been a spate of arrests and detention order renewals for journalists, bloggers and activists. According to a press release issued by the Paris-based Reports Without Borders in May, at least 33 journalists, citizen journalists and bloggers are currently detained in Egypt. On the organization’s 2018 World Press Freedom Index, Egypt was ranked 161 out of 180.