Lawyers and the Mada Masr website said that an Egyptian court ordered today, Tuesday (October 27, 2026), the closure of the well-known independent news website after its editor-in-chief, Lina Atallah, was convicted of running the website without a license, and she was subsequently detained.
The New Cairo Misdemeanor Court ruled a fine of three million pounds (about 54,000 US dollars) against Atallah, on charges of running a news website without a license, with an order to close the website and confiscate its property, according to Hossam Bahgat, director of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, a non-governmental organization responsible for her defense.
The Supreme State Security Prosecution summoned Atallah for investigation last week, on charges of running a website without a license and spreading false news, before referring the case to court. This is the first time that Atallah has appeared in court, despite the fact that she and other journalists from Mada Masr have appeared before the prosecution six times over the past six years. Mada Masr is an independent news platform that has been operating in Egypt since 2013.
Bahjat told Agence France-Presse that the court rejected all requests from the defense team, which refrained from submitting pleadings in objection to this. “So the judge ordered the entry of one of the lawyers unknown to us. Then he recorded in the minutes of the session, in an act astonishing for all those present, that the court decided to assign a lawyer from the Bar Association” to defend Atallah “amid the shouts of the defense team” in rejection of those procedures. Bahjat said that Atallah announced her objection to the presence of that lawyer as her representative, “but the president of the court refused to even register that objection... Then, in an even more shocking behavior, the judge proceeded to record the lawyer’s requests himself in the minutes of the session without the lawyer even uttering a single word.”
The session, the first since the start of the trial, ended with the imposition of the maximum penalty stipulated by the law, which is a fine and the closure of the news website.
After the verdict was pronounced, according to Bahjat, “those present were surprised by the security personnel” surrounding Atallah and “carrying her from the floor out of the hall, where she is still being held.”
Mada Masr: “We will continue our work”
An official at Mada Masr told Agence France-Presse, requesting that his name not be mentioned: “This is intransigence and a very major escalation against one of the few remaining independent platforms,” stressing that they will pay the fine, “and we will submit a new application for a license (...) and we will continue our work.” The Mada Masr platform had previously submitted two applications to obtain a license from the Egyptian authorities, according to the source, who said, “We have not received any official responses to them.”
In 2019, security forces stormed the Mada Masr headquarters and detained the journalists inside for a few hours before leaving them. They then summoned Atallah and other journalists for investigation before the prosecution without trial.
Reporters Without Borders described the decision to close Mada Masr as “shocking,” demanding that “this shameful ruling be immediately rescinded, and Lina Atallah should be released without delay.”
The Egyptian authorities are currently detaining 26 journalists, most of whom face charges of publishing false news or joining groups that violate the law. Tuesday's ruling comes weeks after the arrest of the entire team of the "Mtsadeqesh" platform, which verifies news and verifies information, who are still in pre-trial detention on charges of spreading false news and joining a terrorist group. The journalists of “Mtsadaksh” stated before the prosecution that they were subjected to torture during their detention before being presented to the prosecution, which was denied by the Ministry of Interior, which accused them of working for the Muslim Brotherhood, which is banned in Egypt.
Added after publishing the news:
Atallah was later released, and according to her lawyer, Hassan Al-Azhari, told Agence France-Presse, “Atallah was released after we paid the fine, but we discovered during the completion of the procedures that she had been sentenced in absentia since 2024, with a one-year imprisonment and a fine of 20,000 pounds (about 360 US dollars) for convicting her of spreading false news and running a website without a license.” Al-Azhari stated that the ruling in absentia was appealed, and the court set a session for November 11 to consider it.
