Journalist Ahmed Serag was released early Thursday morning, days after the Supreme State Security Prosecution ordered his release pending investigation in case no. 7 of 2025, alongside 50 others.
“Dad called us a while ago from someone’s phone in the street,” his son, Mostafa, told Al Manassa.
“He told us he’d just left the police station in Shibin El-Kom and was catching a train home.”
On Monday, human rights lawyer Nasser Amin told Al Manassa that the prosecution had ordered Serag's release under guarantee of his place of residence. The release order also included lawyer Nasr El-Din Hamed Abdel Maqsoud, who has been in pre-trial detention since Sept. 13, 2021, in Case no. 2056 of 2021, accused of “joining a terrorist group.”
Serag had been unreachable since the release order, prompting concern from friends and colleagues who posted queries on Facebook.
Authorities arrested Serag on Jan. 16 in connection with a video interview he conducted with Nada Mougheeth, the wife of Al Manassa cartoonist Ashraf Omar, who has been in pre-trial detention since July 22, 2024.
The prosecution's five-hour investigation into Serag and Mougheeth ended with the latter's release on a 5,000 Egyptian-pound-bail (around $100) after accusing her of “joining a terrorist group and spreading false news,” and Serag's detention for 15 days.
The prosecution charged Serag with “joining a terrorist group, spreading false news, using a website to promote terrorist ideas, and committing a terrorist financing crime,” according to Ahmed Osman, a lawyer with the Association for Freedom of Thought and Expression, who spoke to Al Manassa at the time.
The Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights had previously called for authorities to uphold Article 134 of the Criminal Procedure Code, which limits the use of pre-trial detention to clearly defined circumstances, arguing that none applied to Serag's case.
Writers, artists, and poets also urged Serag's immediate release in a Facebook statement, urging their peers to join them in demanding freedom for prisoners of conscience. Signatories included poet Zain Alabdin Fouad, writer Zaki Salem and researcher Ammar Ali Hassan.
