(RSF/IFEX) – In a letter to Interior Minister Habib el Adli, RSF protested the police attack on journalists who were covering legislative elections in Cairo’s Dokki district. RSF Secretary-General Robert Ménard asked the minister “to ensure that an inquiry is immediately opened into the incident and that those responsible are punished.” RSF recalled that an […]
(RSF/IFEX) – In a letter to Interior Minister Habib el Adli, RSF protested the police attack on journalists who were covering legislative elections in Cairo’s Dokki district. RSF Secretary-General Robert Ménard asked the minister “to ensure that an inquiry is immediately opened into the incident and that those responsible are punished.” RSF recalled that an Associated Press journalist was beaten by a policeman on 24 October 2000 while she was covering elections in a city in the Delta region (see IFEX alert of 25 October 2000). Three journalists are currently jailed in Egypt.
According to information collected by RSF, several journalists were assaulted by policemen on 8 November while covering elections in Cairo’s Dokki district, where the second in command of the Muslim Brothers, an Islamist party, is running for election. Hossam Abou al-Magd, a cameraman with the Qatari station El Jazira, was beaten with a metal rod by policemen, some of whom were in plainclothes. His camera was broken in the incident. Abeer Allam and Norbert Chiller, a journalist and photographer, respectively, with the daily “New York Times”, were assaulted by unknown persons. The correspondent for Radio Vatican, Dale Gavlak, was forced to give her recorder to two persons in civilian clothes that she suspects were policemen. According to the journalists, the security forces present at the scene did not intervene. In addition, a journalist with the French agency Agence France-Presse was forbidden from entering the polling station reserved for women. Access to the polling station was blocked by policemen.
