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July 9, 1998
Your Excellency:
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ)
welcomes last Thursday's ruling by the Court of
Cassation which overturned the libel convictions
confirmed early this year against Magdy Hussein,
editor in chief of the bi-weekly newspaper
Al-Sha'b, and Muhammad Hilal, a reporter for the
same newspaper. As Your Excellency is aware,
Hussein and Hilal were convicted on appeal in
February of libeling Alaa' al-Alfi, the son of
former Interior Minister Hassan al-Alfi, and
sentenced each to one year in prison. The basis
for the charges against them was a series of
articles published in Al-Sha'b in 1996, which
alleged that Alaa' al-Alfi had used his father's
position in government to profit from business
deals. Their conviction and subsequent
imprisonment were condemned by Egyptian
journalists and local and international human
rights organizations. We are pleased to learn
that Hussein and Hilal have been released from
Torah Mazraa Prison on July 3 after serving four
months of their sentence.
While CPJ applauds the Court of Cassation's
ruling, we remain deeply concerned by the
ongoing imprisonment of journalists Gamal Fahmy
and Amer Abdel Hadi Nassef, who were similarly
convicted of defamation on appeal in March and
May, respectively. Fahmy, managing editor of the
now-defunct weekly Al-Dustur and a journalist
with the weekly Al-Arabi, is currently serving a
six-month sentence in Torah Mazraa Prison for
allegedly libeling Egyptian writer Tharwat Abaza
in a 1995 column published in Al-Arabi. And on
May 20, Nassef, a journalist who writes
frequently for the weekly Al-Ousbou, was
convicted on appeal of libeling Abaza in an
article published in the daily newspaper
Al-Ahrar in 1996. He was sentenced to three
months in prison and, like Fahmy, is serving his
term in Torah Mazraa Prison.
In addition to the recent spate of criminal
convictions handed down against journalists in
1998, CPJ is also deeply disturbed by the dozens
of other Egyptian reporters and editors who
currently face the prospect of imprisonment for
defamation and other press violations in cases
under investigation or pending in the
courts.
On several occasions in 1998, our
organization has strongly protested the Egyptian
authorities' use of criminal statutes to
prosecute journalists for their published work.
In accordance with the most fundamental
democratic principles of a free press, it is
CPJ's position that journalists should never
face imprisonment for the publication of news
and opinion. The prospect of such punishments
serves only to inhibit the ability of the press
to function freely and to perform its role of
providing information to the public. While CPJ
recognizes the right of individuals to file
libel suits to protect their reputations, it is
our view that civil litigation provides
sufficient safeguards for any citizen whose
reputation has been unfairly damaged by a press
report.
CPJ, a non-governmental organization of
journalists dedicated to defending press freedom
worldwide, respectfully urges Your Excellency to
ensure that the Egyptian government halt all
criminal prosecutions of journalists and secure
the release from prison of Gamal Fahmy and Amer
Nassef. We also call on the Egyptian government
to initiate meaningful legal reform to abolish
statutes which provide for the imprisonment of
journalists for defamation and other
publications offenses. We further ask that you
see to it that the Egyptian government implement
the necessary legal safeguards to protect
journalists from the prospect of imprisonment in
response to their publication of news and
opinion.
I thank you for your attention to this
important matter and look forward to a reply at
your earliest convenience.
Sincerely,
Ann K. Cooper
Executive Director
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