More than 300 individuals and groups signed a joint statement on Wednesday, August 29, demanding the immediate release of Gamal Ziada, father of Ahmed Gamal Ziada, an Egyptian journalist and activist currently living in Belgium. The journalist’s father was arrested last week by Egyptian authorities for allegedly spreading fake news.
The signatories called on the leaders of the national dialogue, launched earlier this year to address human rights issues in the country, and the journalists’ syndicate council to urgently intervene to end the “illegal and immoral” practice of intimidating journalists and stop the assault on freedom of expression and the press. The joint statement was shared by Ahmed on his Facebook page.
Earlier, Ahmed had accused the Egyptian authorities of targeting his family members as “retribution for his personal activities.”
Egyptian authorities arrested Gamal Ziada (65) on August 22 and ordered his detention for 15 days on August 23 pending an investigation into the fake news charges against him, Mada Masr reported on Monday.
Ahmed said in a social media post that his father had “never participated in any partisan or political work” and “what is happening [to his father] is a crackdown on journalists and their work.”
Ahmed has been arrested for his journalism by the Egyptian authorities twice in the past. He was kept in detention for more than a year after his arrest in 2013 for covering a security crackdown on the students of Al-Azhar university. He was released in 2015 before being arrested again in 2019 for “spreading false news.” He was later released on bail.
Ahmed then went to Belgium for higher studies.
His family members have claimed that his father, whose social media is restricted to family and friends, was questioned by the security persons about the activities of his journalist son.
Intimidating family members of dissidents
The Egyptian government under President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has been accused of harassing family members of activists and journalists who currently reside in other countries. The authorities are accused of carrying out unlawful house raids, enforced disappearances, arbitrary arrests, and extended detention of family members to intimidate them and scare the activists.
The crackdown on family members is part of the regime’s attempts to silence all critics of the government and its policies. According to various sources, more than 50,000 political activists, journalists, lawyers, and right activists have been arrested and kept behind bars in Egypt ever since al-Sisi first came to power through a military coup in 2013.
Within the last two weeks, Egyptian authorities have arrested activist Hissam Kassem and journalist Karim Assad for expressing their political views and sharing news online.
Though the el-Sisi regime initiated a so-called national political dialogue earlier this year to address the opposition’s demands, activists claim that it has largely remained an exercise in public relations with no actual and substantial changes in the state’s behavior vis-a-vis political dissent.
