After a weeklong family visit to Egypt, Al Jazeera journalist Bahaa Eldin Ibrahim, his wife and two children were preparing to return to Qatar on New Year’s Eve 2018. They had checked their bags at Cairo International Airport and were going through the passport line when officials separated the parents’ and children’s passports, said Mona Gamal, Eldin Ibrahim’s wife, in a Zoom interview with Capital News Service.
The family was taken to the national security office at the airport for interrogation, she said. Officers took their phones and searched them. They each were asked questions about living and working in Qatar. The adults, Egyptian citizens, were asked whom they voted for in the last Egyptian election, she recalled.
“We were pretty much terrorized in this experience,” Gamal said. “It was horrifying because my children were still children.”
One hour later, Gamal said, security officers confiscated her husband’s passport while Gamal and her children were ordered to board the plane back to Doha, Qatar. Eldin Ibrahim was prohibited from leaving Egypt. Two years later, he was arrested when he attempted to leave the country after receiving a new passport.
It has been almost six years since Gamal has seen her husband. She said she did not know his whereabouts for the first 75 days of his detention. He called her after his May 6, 2020, hearing and told her he had been subjected to abuse: electrocution and deprivation of food and water. He also told her he had lost more than 20 pounds, she said.
CNS was not able to independently verify his allegations.
The Egyptian embassy declined to comment on the allegations for this article.
Eldin Ibrahim was charged with “disseminating false news”, “funding and being a member of a terrorist group” and “abusing social media”. He has yet to stand trial or even obtain a trial date and is being held in Badr City Prison.
According to the Committee for Justice, a Geneva-based rights organization, Badr prison has a reputation for medical negligence, as well as for denying prisoners family visits and sufficient food and water.
Eldin Ibrahim suffers from chronic back pain due to the prison’s conditions and medical negligence, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, an international press advocacy organization.
Before his arrest, Eldin Ibrahim had been a news producer at Al Jazeera since 2014. Tensions between Egypt and Qatar-funded Al Jazeera intensified during the 2011-2012 Arab Spring when Al Jazeera provided continuous coverage of massive anti-government protests in Egypt. Its long-standing leader, Hosni Mubarak, was forced to step down.
Mohamed Morsi, a Muslim Brotherhood leader, became president after the first democratic election in 30 years. But in 2013, army Gen. Abdel Fattah el-Sisi led a military coup that deposed and imprisoned Morsi. El-Sisi also banned Al Jazeera once again.
Amr ElAfifi, a specialist in the Egyptian media environment at the U.S.-based human rights organization Freedom Initiative, told CNS in a video interview that Eldin Ibrahim is collateral damage in the feud between the network and Egyptian authorities. “It’s not about Bahaa. It’s about [his] employer,” he said.
Yehia Ghanem, an exiled Egyptian journalist arrested in 2011 for working with an international nongovernmental organization that trains journalists, agrees. “As long as there are some media beacons that insist on doing good journalism, independent ones, there will always be serious issues with their host countries,” Ghanem said.
Since el-Sisi came to power, Egypt has imprisoned more than 65,000 people. Those include diplomats, journalists and Islamist politicians, according to Ahmed Attar, the executive director of the Egyptian Network for Human Rights.
ElAfifi, of the Freedom Initiative, said many journalists are sent before a hardline terrorism court, which is allowed to renew journalists’ detention indefinitely without trial. The government can add additional cases or charge the journalist again to keep them in custody, even after exceeding the two-year limit allowed by law.
Sherif Mansour, Middle East and North Africa coordinator at CPJ, told CNS that in the last decade Egypt has become one of the nations that has jailed most journalists. “This is a system designed to make… a revolving door policy to keep journalists in custody,” he said.
IFEX, a press freedom organization, reports that since May 2017 more than 600 news sites in Egypt have been blocked by authorities, among them more than 100 independent news outlets. Many journalists and news outlets have adopted self-censorship to avoid punishment.
With a presidential election having just passed in December, and el-Sisi predicted to stay in power until 2030, Egypt’s leadership may still face another uprising, said James Farwell, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute.
“The political environment of Egypt flows from its economic stability and its economic growth, its ability to provide opportunities for people young and old, the ability for families to prosper,” Farwell said. “All of this is about economics.”
Egypt’s economy continues to trend in a negative direction, while abuses of human rights and basic freedoms are becoming more frequent. Thousands of government critics have disappeared or been jailed, according to the State Department’s 2022 Human Rights Report.
The United States, which used to routinely criticize Egypt’s human rights record, has been silent on these issues in recent years. Egypt has become too significant in U.S. national security interests, said Sahar Khamis, an associate professor of communications at the University of Maryland.
“The questions remain, however, whether excessive repression and the stifling of freedoms could truly safeguard stability and security in the long run,” Khamis said, “or whether such policies create a fertile environment for chaos, conflict, and rebellion to spread, as witnessed in the volatile Arab region time and time again.”
The United States has given Egypt $1.3 billion each year in funding and arms since Egypt signed the 1978 Camp David Accords with Israel and became the first major Arab state to recognize Israel’s right to exist.
Eldin Ibrahim’s arrest has taken a toll on his family. His wife, Gamal, describes him as a kind person, a family man and her best friend.
“It is a very difficult situation to have to bring up your children in,” she said. “But I cope. I’m doing my best in coping and raising my children.”
Gamal said her daughter, Maryam, 16, spends nights crying over her father. Her son, Yahia, 19, acts tough, she said, but breaks down when they talk about his father. Since 2018, Gamal and her children have not returned to Egypt and they have moved to Istanbul.
The family has not spoken to Eldin Ibrahim since the phone call they received after his May 2020 hearing. “When he gets out, he has a good future, good career,” said Egyptian journalist Ghanem. “We’re all waiting for him.”
