The Supreme State Security Prosecution summoned yesterday, Monday, 19 October 2026, Mada Masr editor-in-chief Lina Attalah to appear for a new questioning session on Wednesday, 21 October, in Case No. 9072 of 2026. The summons did not include any explanation of the reasons for the investigation.
This is the sixth case against the outlet, its journalists, and its editor-in-chief over the past six years. The most recent was in August 2025, when Attalah was questioned and accused of publishing false news and operating a website without a license, over a report on prisoners’ complaints of abuse. The prosecution later ordered her release pending investigation on bail of 30,000 Egyptian pounds.
The summons comes weeks after the arrest of six journalists, the entire editorial team of the Matsada2sh platform, on 28 and 29 September 2026. They were brought before the Supreme State Security Prosecution, which ordered their pretrial detention for 15 days pending investigation.
The repeated summonses and cases against journalists, without any stated reason, reveal a pattern of sustained siege on the press, in which investigations and cases are used as a sword hanging over the necks of independent media outlets rather than as a tool of justice. This cannot be separated from a reality in which Egypt ranks 169th out of 180 countries in the 2026 World Press Freedom Index published by Reporters Without Borders, nor from the systematic use of counter-terrorism policies and legislation to silence dissent and close the public sphere that the Egyptian authorities have pursued for years.
While condemning the summoning of Lina Attalah for questioning, the Support for Law and Democracy Foundation demands that she be released without bail or any other financial guarantees, that the case be closed, and that the charges brought against her over her journalistic work be dropped. It also calls for an end to the prosecution of journalists for their work, the immediate release of the Matsada2sh journalists, and the dropping of the fabricated charges against them.
