Mada Masr editor-in-chief released on EGP 100,000 bail

Lina Attalah, editor-in-chief of independent outlet Mada Masr, was released on 100,000 EGP ($1,850) bail on Wednesday, human rights lawyer Nabeh Elganadi told Al Manassa. She is being investigated in Case No. 9072 of 2026 for allegedly operating an unlicensed website and publishing false news.

According to Elganadi, the Supreme State Security Prosecution questioned Attalah for about six hours about the operation of Mada Masr and a report it published in Arabic on October 13 titled “Protests at several prisons, detainee ‘banishments’ surround delay to Criminal Procedure Code.”

Human rights lawyer Ragia Omran, who attended Attalah’s questioning, told a group of supporters that the investigator began by asking the Mada Masr editor-in-chief about the website’s founding, its funding and the board of directors of the company that owns it. Attalah responded by presenting a copy of the company’s registration documents, which contain those details.

According to Mada Masr, this is the sixth case brought against the outlet in the past six years, most recently in Aug. 2025, when the Supreme State Security Prosecution released Attalah on bail of 30,000 pounds (about $550), pending investigation in Case No. 6185 of 2025 (Supreme State Security).

At the time, prosecutors charged Attalah with “publishing false news and operating a website without a license,” citing National Security Agency investigations following the outlet’s publication of a report about complaints from prisoners who said they had been subjected to abuses.

The summons came more than three weeks after the fact-checking platform Matsadaaash and its legal representative, the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, announced the arrest of six journalists working for the platform. The initiative’s director, Hossam Bahgat, described the security campaign as unprecedented in the history of Egyptian journalism.

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, including Mada Masr and Al Manassa, which has been blocked 13 times, most recently in July 2022, even as authorities lifted blocks on other sites, including Darb, Al-Sulta Al-Rabaa, Zat Misr, and Misr 360.