Egyptian investigative journalist Ismail Alexandrani was released Monday after being imprisoned for seven years for reporting on military operations in North Sinai, his lawyer Khaled Ali announced.
In October, a military cassation court reduced the prison sentence against Alexandrani to seven years instead of ten after he was convicted on charges of belonging to an outlawed organization and spreading false news, ‘Al Ahram’ has reported.
The journalist’s case was denounced by the NGO Amnesty International, which claimed in 2017 that his arrest was «an illustration of the repressive media blackout imposed in Sinai, where journalists and researchers face threats and intimidation for daring to reveal the reality of what is happening on the ground.»
The NGO also denounced that the Egyptian Public Prosecution interrogated the journalist in December 2015 about the political situation in the country, in addition to conducting an exhaustive search on his social networks, emails and personal computer.
The journalist was arrested in 2015 at Hurghada airport after his return from Germany and sentenced to ten years in prison by a military court. The authorities accused Alexandrani of belonging to the Islamist organization Muslim Brotherhood, which was declared a terrorist group after the 2013 coup d’état in which the then elected president, Mohamed Mursi, was overthrown.
Reporters Without Borders pointed out that almost all of the detained journalists, as well as human rights defenders or other socially relevant figures, are accused of «spreading false news», among other charges.
Egyptian President Abdelfattah al-Sisi came to power in July 2013 in a coup d’état he led after a series of mass demonstrations against the then Islamist President Mohamed Mursi, the country’s first democratically elected president, who died in 2019 during a court hearing against him.
The marshal has promoted a broad campaign of repression and persecution against opponents, both liberal groups and Islamist organizations such as the Muslim Brotherhood – declared as terrorist – an initiative that human rights groups have denounced as the most serious in recent times.
