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Prosecutors in Egypt have charged six journalists working for the independent fact-checking platform Matsda2sh with belonging to the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, according to their lawyer.<\/b><\/p>\n
Nabeh al-Ganadi said on Monday that the men were accused of joining a terrorist group, funding terrorism, publishing “fake news”, and using social media to call for acts of terrorism, he added. Matsda2sh has denied the allegations.<\/p>\n
Later, Ganadi said the State Security Prosecution had remanded five of them in custody for 15 days, and that the sixth was still being interrogated.<\/p>\n
The journalists’ arrests last week were condemned by international human rights and press freedom organisations.<\/p>\n
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) called the detention of Matsda2sh’s entire newsroom a “grave escalation in Egypt’s campaign against independent journalism”.<\/p>\n
It said the country remained one of the world’s leading jailers of journalists, with 25 currently imprisoned or detained.<\/p>\n
President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi has overseen what human rights groups say is an unprecedented crackdown on dissent since he led the military’s overthrow of his predecessor, Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohammed Morsi, in 2013.<\/p>\n
Tens of thousands of people have been detained, mainly Muslim Brotherhood officials and supporters but also leading secular and liberal activists, media workers and academics.<\/p>\n
Matsda2sh, whose name means “Do Not Believe” in Arabic, was founded in 2018 to “resist the flow of false or misleading news”, according to its website.<\/p>\n
It regularly fact-checks statements made by Egyptian officials and carries out investigative reporting in Egypt and other Arab countries.<\/p>\n
Security personnel arrested the six Matsda2sh journalists – Abdullah Qadry, Mohammed Ashraf Abu Emeira, Islam Barakat, Omar Helal, Mohammed Mahmoud, and Mohammed Adel – in a series of raids on their homes across Egypt on 28 and 29 September, according to the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR), whose lawyers are defending them.<\/p>\n
Initially, no information was provided about where they were being held or the reasons for their detention, the EIPR said.<\/p>\n
On Thursday, the Egyptian interior ministry confirmed their arrests and accused Matsda2sh of seeking to destabilise the country through disinformation.<\/p>\n
It said the platform was unlicensed and operated from abroad, and that its founder, Abdel Rahman Mansour, was member of the Muslim Brotherhood.<\/p>\n