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| Egyptian satirists arrested for mocking president | Egyptian satirists arrested for mocking president |
| (35 minutes later) | |
| Police have arrested four members of a satirical street group that mocked Egypt’s president and his supporters in video clips posted online, the latest in an escalating crackdown on dissent that lays bare the government’s diminishing tolerance for criticism. | |
| Mahmoud Othman, the lawyer of the street performers, said the four were arrested late on Monday in Cairo. He said they were likely to face charges of inciting protests and insulting state institutions. A fifth member of the group, Ezzedeen Khaled, 19, was detained on Saturday and faces the same charges. | |
| The four arrested on Monday are Mohammed Adel, Mohammed Dessouki, Mohammed Yahya and Mohammed Gabr. The lawyer said their ages range between 19 and 25. The sixth member of the group, Mohammed Zein, has not been detained, Othman said. | |
| Related: Egypt police suppress protests against Sisi government | Related: Egypt police suppress protests against Sisi government |
| The six-man group, Awlad el-Shawarea (Street Children) has a large social media following. It shoots selfie-style clips on the streets that deal mostly with social and political issues. | |
| A recent video was entitled “al-Sisi, my president, made things worse” while another clip mocked president Abdel Fatah al-Sisi’s hallmark speech endings of “Long live Egypt!” and his recent reference to advice by his late mother “never to covet what belongs to others”. | |
| The group has also recently devoted an entire clip to Egypt’s surrender of control over two strategic Red Sea islands to Saudi Arabia, mocking the mostly desert but oil-rich kingdom as lacking in civilisational pedigree. It also mocked the Egyptian government for seeking to silence those who claim the islands are Egyptian. | |
| News of the transfer of the islands to the Saudis broke during last month’s high-profile visit to Cairo by the Saudi monarch, King Salman, who announced a multibillion-dollar aid package to Egypt, raising speculation that the deal over the Tiran and Sanafir islands at the mouth of the Gulf of Aqaba was a sell-off. | |
| Authorities have been cracking down on activists, journalists and rights lawyers following anti-government protests last month that followed the announcement on the islands. | |
| Sisi took office in June 2014, nearly a year after he, as military chief, led the ousting of the Islamist Mohammed Morsi, Egypt’s first freely elected president, whose divisive, one-year rule sparked massive street demonstrations calling for his removal. Sisi has since overseen the arrest of thousands of Morsi supporters as well as scores of pro-democracy activists who fuelled the 2011 uprising against the 29-year rule of autocrat Hosni Mubarak. | |
| Under Sisi’s rule, many freedoms won as a result of the 2011 uprising have been eroded and a personality cult has been built by supporters in the media. The general-turned-politician, however, has been devoting most of his time and energy to the revival of the economy, initiating a series of ambitious mega projects that are yet to bear fruit for the country’s 90 million people. |