First Matsadaash journalist remanded for 15 days after marathon questioning

Egypt’s Supreme State Security Prosecution ordered the 15-day detention of Matsadaash journalist Mohamed Ashraf Abo Emeira on Sunday, pending investigations into Case No. 8083 of 2026 following a 12-hour interrogation session.

Islam Salama, a lawyer with the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR), said he attended the session at the prosecution’s New Cairo headquarters following a formal request by the defense team. 

In a post on his Facebook account, Salama noted the interrogation began at 10:00 pm on Saturday and lasted until Sunday morning. The prosecution charged Abo Emeira with joining a terrorist group, publishing and broadcasting false news and data, and using a social media account to commit a crime, before ordering his pretrial detention.

Salama confirmed that the interrogation was limited solely to Abo Emeira, whose Facebook account details his journalistic work. The legal team continues to monitor the situation at the prosecution to determine when the other five detained journalists—Abdullah Qadri, Islam Barakat, Mohamed Adel, Mohamed Mahmoud and Omar Hilal—will be questioned. 

Prosecution questioning focused strictly “on a number of topics published on Matsadaash, the method of selecting topics, identifying sources, and the purpose of publication,” Hossam Bahgat, executive director of EIPR told Al Manassa.

“During questioning, it emerged that Abo Emeira was held in recent days at a National Security facility under a counterterrorism detention order, a law the Ministry of Interior violated by preventing him from notifying his family and lawyer of his location,” Bahgat said.

“At the end of the interrogation, Abo Emeira noted suffering from chronic illnesses, prompting the prosecution to allow him necessary medication, while the EIPR lawyer requested his transfer to a hospital,” he added. 

Prior to Abo Emeira’s appearance, the syndicate’s lawyer reviewed Public Prosecution data logs and confirmed that none of the six had been brought before authorities, according to Journalists Syndicate head Khaled Elbalshy.

On Thursday evening, the privately owned newspaper Al-Masry Al-Youm published an article titled “Detention of 6 defendants from Matsadaash for 15 days pending investigations...  National Security investigations reveal new details”, a copy of which circulated widely on social media.

However, Hossam Bahgat, who is also the legal representative for the journalists, debunked the report in a post on Facebook. Bahgat stated that the head of the Supreme State Security Prosecution denied the report directly to the legal team, confirming that none of the six journalists had been interrogated at the time.

In response to the false report, the Journalists Syndicate submitted two requests to the Prosecutor General and the Supreme State Security Prosecution seeking clarification, according to a syndicate statement.

The syndicate demanded formal notification prior to any interrogations, invoking Article 69 of Syndicate Law No. 76 of 1970. The law obligates the Public Prosecution to notify the syndicate in advance of complaints against journalists regarding their work and grants the syndicate head or a designee the right to attend the questioning.

These developments follow an open sit-in launched Saturday evening inside the Journalists Syndicate headquarters to protest the arrests and restrictions on press freedom.

The demonstration, attended by Elbalshy and eight of the 12 board members, lasted over two hours. Participants agreed to maintain the sit-in daily until an emergency board meeting scheduled for Monday.

Inside the syndicate, protesters chanted, “Bring the six from the cells... Freedom to every prisoner,” and “Long live the journalists’ struggle,” while holding banners reading “Matsaadash... Journalism is not a crime” and “Down with security-instruction journalism”.

Outside, a heavy security presence cordoned off Abdel Khalek Tharwat Street. Security forces deployed microbuses and Central Security Forces troop carriers to prevent journalists from demonstrating on the syndicate’s steps.

During the event, Elbalshy noted that the location of the journalists remained entirely unknown three days after the Ministry of Interior acknowledged their arrest. Meanwhile, more than 400 journalists signed a joint solidarity statement condemning the arrests as a dangerous escalation targeting independent media, holding authorities responsible for the journalists’ safety, and demanding their immediate release.

Matsadaash had initially announced in a statement on Tuesday that editors Mohamed Ashraf and Abdullah Qadri were arrested late Monday, before later confirming that the total had risen to six journalists with the detention of Islam Barakat, Mohamed Adel, Mohamed Mahmoud and Omar Hilal.

More than 48 hours later, the Ministry of Interior issued an official statement regarding the Matsadaash journalists, alleging the platform operates as part of the media wing of the Muslim Brotherhood.

The ministry claimed the page is managed from abroad by fugitive Brotherhood member Abdel Rahman Shoukry Ali Abdel Galil Mansour and accused the six journalists of preparing fabricated reports in exchange for foreign funding.

The platform previously faced security harassment in 2023 when Matsadaash editor Karim Asaad was detained for 48 hours after security forces raided his home to question him over the platform’s coverage of a private plane seized in Zambia.

Zambian authorities announced in August 2023 that the plane, which had departed from Cairo to Lusaka, was found carrying $5.7 million in cash, 602 metal bars suspected to be gold, and five pistols with 126 rounds of ammunition.

Egypt ranks 169th out of 180 countries on the 2026 World Press Freedom Index and remains among the world’s 10 worst jailers of journalists according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. 

In March 2024, the Journalists Syndicate criticized the continued blocking of several news websites, primarily Al Manassa, which has been blocked 13 times, most recently in July 2022, despite the lifting of blocks on other sites, including Darb, Al-Sulta Al-Rabaa, Zat Misr, and Misr 360.