Security personnel lifted prominent Egyptian journalist Lina Attalah off the ground and carried her out of a Cairo courtroom on Tuesday, moments after a judge convicted the Mada Masr editor-in-chief of running an unlicensed website and ordered the independent outlet closed.
Attalah remained in custody at the courthouse on Tuesday afternoon, the outlet said.
The ruling is the harshest outcome yet in six years of legal cases against Mada Masr, one of the few independent outlets still operating in Egypt under the authoritarian government of President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.
The ninth circuit of the New Cairo Misdemeanour Court, presided over by Judge Mohamed Mubarak, imposed the maximum penalty: a fine of 3m Egyptian pounds (around $53,500), the closure of Mada Masr's website and the confiscation of its property.
Hossam Bahgat, executive director of the rights group Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, who attended the hearing, told Mada Masr that after deliberations the judge cleared the courtroom of everyone except Attalah and her lawyers.
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Plainclothes officers and guards then filled the room, with a National Security Agency officer present, he said.
The judge, joined by a representative of the Supreme State Security Prosecution, upheld his rejection of all procedural requests from the defence, including to submit documents and hear witnesses. The defence refused to enter a plea while those requests went unanswered.
The judge then called for a lawyer unknown to the defence team and appointed him to represent Attalah, "in a move that astonished all those present", Bahgat said.
'If Egypt can put in custody one of its most respected editors and shut down her newsroom, no independent journalist in the country is safe'
- Sara Qudah, CPJ regional director
Her eight lawyers objected, and Attalah told the court she did not accept the appointment. The judge refused to record her objection in the minutes.
"In an even more shocking move," Bahgat said, the judge himself began writing down requests attributed to the court-appointed lawyer, who had not spoken. The verdict was then read out over shouts from the defence.
Media freedom rights group Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) denounced Attalah's detention as an attack on free speech.
“The conviction of Lina Attallah and the order to shut down Mada Masr represent a devastating blow to press freedom in Egypt and a direct message aimed at dismantling independent media in the country,” said CPJ Regional Director Sara Qudah.
“Attalah and Mada Masr are among the most prominent voices in Egypt’s independent media landscape, providing critical reporting on issues of public interest that might otherwise go unreported.
"If Egypt can put in custody one of its most respected editors and shut down her newsroom, no independent journalist in the country is safe. Attalah must be released immediately, and Mada Masr must be allowed to keep reporting.”
Licensing dispute
Attalah was referred for trial on 22 October in Case No. 9072/2026, a day after more than six hours of questioning.
Prosecutors also questioned her on publishing false news, with questions touching on a Mada Masr report about protests at prisons across the country, but that accusation was dropped from the charge sheet. She had been released on LE100,000 ($1,053) bail.
Founded by Attalah in 2013 and blocked inside Egypt since May 2017, Mada Masr has applied for a licence on multiple occasions since 2018, when a new media law was passed.
The outlet said it only learned the regulator had rejected its application in 2022, when Attalah was shown the decision while being questioned in another case.
The Journalists' Syndicate, headed by Khaled al-Balshy, argued that the proper recourse was a challenge before the administrative courts rather than criminal prosecution.
The case is the sixth brought against Mada Masr, its journalists and editors in six years.
In August 2025, prosecutors questioned Attalah over "false news" and operating without a licence after the outlet reported alleged abuses at Badr 3 prison.
In 2022, Attalah and three Mada Masr journalists faced trial for "offending" pro-government lawmakers.
Security forces raided the outlet's Cairo office in November 2019, briefly detaining Attalah and several colleagues.
Wider crackdown
The verdict comes less than a month after security forces arrested six journalists from the investigative platform Matsadaash on 28 and 29 September.
Attalah's summons came hours after Mada Masr joined seven other Arab outlets in launching a joint newsroom to fill the gap left by those arrests.
Before the ruling, 119 rights organisations and media institutions condemned what they called an "unprecedented attack on press freedom" in Egypt.
Human Rights Watch said the prosecution raised concerns about licensing requirements being used to restrict independent media.
Egypt ranks 169th of 180 countries in Reporters Without Borders' 2026 index, which said that despite high-profile releases, including that of writer Alaa Abd el-Fattah, Egypt remains one of the world's biggest jailers of journalists.
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