A court in Egypt has ordered the closure of the independent news website Mada Masr, finding its editor-in-chief, Lina Attalah, guilty of operating without a licence.
This was reported by DW.
Attalah, one of Egypt’s best-known journalists, was detained for several hours after the verdict was announced and later released after paying a fine.
The court imposed a fine of 3 million Egyptian pounds — about €48,112. This is the maximum possible penalty for such an offence. The court also ordered the website to cease operations and its equipment to be confiscated.
Mada Masr, founded in 2013, is one of the few independent news outlets still operating in Egypt. It is known for its investigations into corruption, human rights abuses, and the military’s influential role in the country.
Mada Masr Editor-in-Chief Lina Attalah was fined LE3 million by the New Cairo Misdemeanor Court, which convicted her on charges of managing an unlicensed website, issuing an order for the website’s closure. Attalah was taken into custody after the issue of the ruling. Tuesday’s session at the ninth circuit of the New Cairo Misdemeanor Court, presided over by judge Mohamed Mubarak, was temporarily suspended for deliberations after Attalah’s defense counsel requested time to review the case file. After the court returned from deliberations, the judge ordered the courtroom cleared of everyone except Attalah and her defense counsel, the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights’ executive director Hossam Bahgat, who was also present, told Mada Masr. The room then filled with plainclothes officers and guards, with a National Security Agency officer in attendance, he added. The presiding judge and a Supreme State Security Prosecution representative returned to the session and the judge announced that the court has decided to stand by its rejection of all the procedural arguments presented by the defense, including requests to bring in any documentation or hear any witnesses. The judge then asked the defense team to present its plea. The counsel insisted that it would not submit a plea as long as its requests were unanswered by the court. The judge then abruptly asked for a lawyer unknown to any member of the defense counsel to be brought in, “in a move that astonished all those present,” said Bahgat, and announced that the court decided to appoint a lawyer for Attalah. At that point, all members of the defense counsel cried out to reject the court’s appointment of a lawyer when the eight chosen lawyers were present. Attalah herself spoke to say she did not accept the court-appointed lawyer acting on her behalf, an objection the judge refused to have recorded in the session’s minutes. "In an even more shocking move,” said Bahgat, the judge himself began to log down the requests of the court-appointed lawyer, without the lawyer having said a word. The judge then read out the conviction amid shouts and protests from the defense counsel. The judge sentenced Attalah to the maximum possible penalty: a LE3 million fine, the closure of Mada Masr’s website and the confiscation of its property. Security personnel then surrounded Attalah, lifted her off the ground and took her out of the courtroom, where she remains in custody in the courthouse.
— Mada Masr مدى مصر (@MadaMasr) October 27, 2026
Attalah’s lawyers said that during the court hearing in Cairo on Tuesday, the judge rejected their requests to review the case file and submit additional evidence.
According to Hossam Bahgat, head of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR), who attended the hearing, the judge appointed a new lawyer to represent Attalah — despite objections from her eight-member defence team. “Even more shocking was that the judge began dictating motions on behalf of this lawyer, who did not utter a single word, and entered them into the official record,” Bahgat told the AFP news agency.
During the release procedure, Attalah also learned that in 2024, in a separate case, she had been sentenced in absentia to one year in prison and a fine of 20,000 Egyptian pounds.
This sentence was handed down on charges of spreading false news and running a website without the appropriate licence. Her lawyers have appealed the decision. A retrial is scheduled for 11 November.
Authorities Have Blocked Access to Mada Masr Since 2017
Mada Masr has spent years in legal battles with the Egyptian authorities, who have blocked access to its website inside the country since 2017.
According to the outlet’s representatives, they first applied for a licence in 2018 but received no response. They only learned that the application had been rejected when prosecutors mentioned it during another court case in 2022.
Mada Masr appealed the decision. The most recent application submitted by the outlet has also gone unanswered since 2023.
Over the past six years, six cases have been brought against the outlet and its journalists, but the trial held on Tuesday was the first of its kind.