The Egyptian Supreme State Security Prosecution extended the detention of the journalist Ahmed Fayez Abdel-Maguid for 15 additional days, pending investigations in Case No. 2070 of 2022.
Abdul Majeed was detained on November 10 over a Facebook post he wrote slamming the high living costs and calling for the November 11 protests.
However, he denied shortly before his arrest his support to the November protests.
I do not support the November 11 protest, and I will not participate in it, Fayez wrote a few minutes before his arrest.
The former editor-in-chief of Al-Midan newspaper was accused of “belonging to and financing a terrorist group, participating in a terrorist act, and using social media for inciting a terrorism,” charges that the Egyptian regime usually uses as a pretext to arrest and prosecute political activists.
Fayez’s arrest brought the total number of journalists held in Egyptian prisons to 15, in addition to dozens of unregistered journalists and media professionals.
Since Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi took power in a military coup in 2013, authorities have long launched successive crackdowns on protests and civil society organisations. The right to protest and free speech have been eroded since then.
Since then, the Egyptian authorities have arrested thousands of people in politically motivated arrests, many of whom have been convicted, sentenced in unfair trials, or held without trial for years on baseless terrorism-related charges, and detained in extremely poor detention conditions.
