Egyptian Court Orders News Site Closed as Critics Warn of a Crackdown

AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTMada Masr, one of Egypt’s few independent media outlets, said a judge ordered it closed for operating without a license and detained its editor in chief.Lina Attalah, co-founder and editor in chief of the Cairo-based online newspaper Mada Masr, in Cairo in 2020.Credit...Khaled Desouki/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesOct. 27, 2026, 1:21 p.m. ETAn Egyptian court ordered the closure on Tuesday of a prominent independent news website, Mada Masr, and detained its editor in chief, the outlet said, sparking an outcry from rights groups of an intensifying media crackdown.The editor, Lina Attalah, who is also a co-founder of Mada Masr, was fined 3 million Egyptian pounds, around $53,400 dollars, on charges of managing an unlicensed website, the outlet said in a statement. It added that Ms. Attalah was then carried out of the courthouse by security personnel.Ms. Attalah’s lawyers said they would appeal the case, and they are currently working to have her released on bail, said Lobna Darwish, advocacy director at the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights. The group’s legal director, Hoda Nasrallah, is part of Ms. Attalah’s defense team.Mada Masr, founded in 2013, two years after the Arab Spring protests that toppled the then-president Hosni Mubarak, has received international acclaim as one of the few outlets to publish politically independent journalism from Egypt, where most media is closely affiliated with or owned by the state. Based in Cairo, Mada Masr’s website has been blocked in Egypt since 2017. “This was a black day in the history of journalism,” Mahmoud Kamel, the deputy head of the Egyptian Journalists Syndicate, said in an interview after the court decision. He warned of the chilling effect the ruling would have on other journalists in the country.The Committee to Protect Journalists describes Egypt as having among the highest number of jailed journalists worldwide, with 25 currently in detention.Ms. Attalah’s case follows the arrest earlier this month of the entire six-member team of an Egyptian fact-checking news outlet, Matsaddash. Several of those detained journalists said they were tortured by security forces and forced to give fake confessions, according to a statement by the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, whose lawyers are representing the group.Egypt’s State Information Service, ​which liaises with foreign media on behalf of state agencies, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In the Matsaddash case, the authorities accused the group of being affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, which was banned by Egypt in 2013, the year the army overthrew the country’s democratically elected president, Mohamed Morsi. Matsaddash denies any affiliation with the group.Lina Attalah was summoned by the authorities for questioning last week, Mada Masr said in its statement. Rights groups said her interrogation lasted six hours and included questions on Mada Masr’s lack of licensing, and its coverage of protests in Egyptian prisons.Mada Masr says it has repeatedly applied for a license to operate from the Egyptian authorities in recent years, but those requests have either been rejected or ignored. According to the statement from Mada Masr, the presiding judge refused Ms. Attalah’s attorneys’ requests to be given time to review her case file and to present witnesses. The Egyptian government also did not respond to a request for comment on that claim.The judge later brought in a lawyer unknown to the defense team and appointed him as Ms. Attalah’s attorney, over loud objections from the defense lawyers and the defendant herself, according to Hossam Bahgat, the executive director of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, who was present at the trial.“The judge then read out the conviction amid shouts and protests from the defense counsel,” the statement from Mada Masr said. “Security personnel then surrounded Attalah, lifted her off the ground and took her out of the courtroom, where she remains in custody in the courthouse.” Ms. Darwish, from the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, called for Ms. Attalah’s immediate release.“The speed at which criminal and judicial proceedings were initiated by security and judicial authorities against Lina, and the detention of six journalists of another media platform, all point out to this being a move by Egyptian authorities to destroy the last remnants of independent media in Egypt,” she said.Following Ms. Attalah’s questioning last week, over 110 civil society organizations and rights groups around the world, including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, issued a joint condemnation of what they called an “unprecedented attack on press freedom” in Egypt. The closure of Mada Masr, it warned, “would constitute a death knell to one of the last remaining independent media outlets operating in Egypt today.”Erika Solomon is The Times’s bureau chief for Iran and Iraq.Rania Khaled is a Times reporter and researcher based in Cairo.Related ContentAdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENT