Egyptian Police Official Files Complaint Against Reuters
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Version 0 of 1. CAIRO — An Egyptian police official filed a criminal complaint against Reuters after the news agency published an article last week connecting the police to the disappearance of an Italian student, Giulio Regeni, prosecutors said on Saturday. The article, citing security officials, said the police detained Mr. Regeni days before his brutalized body turned up on the outskirts of Cairo — contradicting government assertions that he had not been arrested. The complaint, filed Friday, accused Reuters and its Cairo bureau chief of spreading false news and harming Egypt’s image, raising new alarms about a crackdown on journalists in Egypt. Prosecutors said on Saturday that they were investigating the complaint. It was the most prominent legal action against a foreign media organization since the prosecution in 2014 of three journalists working for Al Jazeera English. But while that case was inflected with political tensions between Egypt and Qatar, which owns Al Jazeera, the move against Reuters seemed driven by the agency’s reporting on a topic of considerable sensitivity to President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. Mr. Regeni’s case has unnerved the government, focusing unwanted international attention on abuse by Egypt’s security services and straining the country’s relations with Italy, a close ally and trading partner. This month, Italy recalled its ambassador to Egypt to protest what the Italian government said was a lack of Egyptian cooperation in a joint investigation into Mr. Regeni’s death. The scrutiny of the case comes as Mr. Sisi faces growing criticism at home, including rare protests, over his handling of the economy and other issues. Mr. Regeni, 28, disappeared on Jan. 25 in Cairo, when the city was blanketed by security agents trying to prevent protests on the anniversary of the 2011 uprising against former President Hosni Mubarak. Mr. Regeni’s body, beaten and burned, was discovered outside Cairo on Feb. 3, the authorities said. His injuries included cigarette burns and signs he had been beaten on his feet — telltale signs of abuse by the security services, according to Egyptian human rights workers. The authorities have denied reports that Mr. Regeni was in state custody but have not provided a credible alternate theory for the crime. On Thursday, Reuters published an article citing six unnamed intelligence and police officials who said that Mr. Regeni was detained by plainclothes police officers on the day he disappeared. The officials told Reuters that Mr. Regeni was taken to the Izbakiya police station, near downtown Cairo, and held for half an hour before he was transferred to a facility run by Egypt’s homeland security agency. The officials quoted in the Reuters article said they did not know what happened to Mr. Regeni after he was detained. In a statement issued on Saturday, a Reuters spokesman, David Crundwell, said the article “did not state who is responsible for his death, and is consistent with Reuters’ commitment to accurate and independent journalism.” The article broadly matched the accounts of a witness and three security officials who spoke to The New York Times in February and said that Mr. Regeni was taken into police custody on Jan. 25. One of the security officials said that the authorities were suspicious of Mr. Regeni in part because of his research on labor movements in Egypt. The Interior Ministry, which supervises the police, denied the allegations in the Reuters article and said the government reserved the right to take legal action. Then on Friday, Maj. Mohamed Reda, the chief detective at the Izbakiya police station, filed an official complaint against Reuters. |