Al Jazeera’s Mahmoud Hussein spends 5 hundredth day in Egyptian detention center

Friday marks 500 days since Al Jazeera journalist Mahmoud Hussein became as soon as arrested by Egyptian authorities after returning to his dwelling nation for a holiday.

Hussein, an Egyptian national who became as soon as essentially based completely in Qatar, became as soon as stopped, questioned and detained by authorities on December 20, 2016, after travelling to Cairo on annual leave.

5 days after his preliminary arrest, Egypt’s interior ministry accused him of « disseminating counterfeit news and receiving financial funds from international authorities in justify to defame the express’s popularity ».

Since then, he has been place in solitary confinement and denied his upright rights. He has yet to be formally charged.

In accordance with Egyptian regulation, the most time a person is also held for interrogation is two years. If Hussein stays imprisoned, he’ll attain that in December 2018.

His family says the journalist is in uncomfortable physical and psychological condition, and is being denied ample medicine for ailments.

Al Jazeera has rejected the accusations towards Hussein and has known as on Egypt to unconditionally unencumber its journalist. 

At the time of his arrest, Sherif Mansour, of the Committee to Offer protection to Journalists, mentioned: « Egyptian authorities are waging a systematic campaign towards Al Jazeera, consisting of arbitrary arrest, censorship, and systematic harassment. »

Human rights and press freedom groups like also condemned his ongoing detention.

Focusing on of journalists

Hussein’s detention is the most popular in a string of arrests by Egyptian authorities focusing on the network’s personnel in the nation.

In Can also merely 2016, Ibrahim Helal, the frail editor-in-chief of Al Jazeera Arabic, became as soon as sentenced to death in absentia for purportedly endangering national security.

Egypt also imprisoned Al Jazeera’s Baher Mohamed, Mohamed Fahmy and Peter Greste on costs of spreading « counterfeit news » in a case that became as soon as widely condemned by world media outlets and politicians alike. 

Mohamed and Fahmy spent 437 days in detention center earlier than being released, while Greste spent bigger than a One year in penal complex.

The mediate who sentenced the journalists mentioned they were introduced together « by the satan » to destabilise the nation.