Egyptian Journalist Faces Trial in Media Crackdown

Prominent Egyptian journalist Lina Attalah will stand trial in a criminal court on Wednesday, facing potential prison time amid rising global condemnation.

Authorities are retrying Attalah after sentencing her in absentia to one year in prison in 2024—a conviction issued without her knowledge for operating an unlicensed website and publishing “false news.”

The editor-in-chief of the independent news outlet Mada Masr discovered the conviction only last month upon her release from detention in a separate case, where a court fined her three million Egyptian pounds and ordered Mada Masr to shut down.

International rights monitoring organisations and the United Nations strongly condemned the proceedings, highlighting systemic fair-trial violations and an unprecedented press crackdown in Cairo.

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights criticised Egypt’s widening assaults on press freedom, while the Committee to Protect Journalists called on international allies to demand an immediate end to journalist prosecutions.

Attalah noted that Mada Masr repeatedly sought official licensing over eight years without receiving a response, arguing that authorities use licensing regulations as tools of political exclusion and control to enforce media silence.