Police raids on Egyptian journalists should alarm anyone who cares about press freedom

There are few more worthy journalism projects than Mada Masr, and fewer more brave journalists in the world than those who work in its Cairo offices.

Launched in 2013, two years after the uprising that toppled Egyptian ruler Hosni Mubarak, the online newspaper sought to combine the zealousness unleashed by the revolution with the rigour of top-notch journalism. It eventually became the only credible and independent news outlet in Egypt.

For six years, as strongman Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has tightened the reins on politics and society, arresting or exiling dissidents, Mada Masr has regularly broken big stories about human-rights violations and corruption, in both Arabic and English. It has examined the Egyptian regime’s financial dealings as well as its human-rights failings.

It labours under near-impossible and occasionally terrifying conditions. Access to information is limited by officials who refuse to disclose numbers or even pick up the phone, and sources often too scared to talk. Egypt is a country where dissidents and those suspected of links to militant groups regularly disappear into prisons and unofficial desert camps run by the security forces.

On Sunday, Egypt’s security forces finally swooped. Among those detained were Mada Masr co-founder and chief editor, Lina Attalah, as well as a number of reporters and editors. Another editor, Shady Zalat, had been arrested a day earlier. The impetus for the crackdown appears to have been a story reporting that Sisi’s son Mahmoud, an intelligence official, had been transferred to Moscow under pressure by senior figures worried he was becoming a liability.

Amid a global outcry, the journalists were released, though the fate of Mada Masr remains uncertain.

Frankly, many are stunned that the newspaper was allowed to continue for so long. The raid on its offices marks yet another dreadful milestone in Egypt, the Arab world’s most populous country. Journalists and fair-minded people around the world – including western officials who coddle Sisi – should be gravely alarmed.

Yours,

Borzou Daragahi

International correspondent