Egypt Releases Al Jazeera Journalist After Four Years In Jail
Al Jazeera journalist Mahmoud Hussein was on Saturday set free after more than four years in an Egyptian jail.
Hussein, an Egyptian national held under preventive detention since December 2016, was not formally charged or tried.
In a statement, Mostefa Souag, acting director-general of the Al Jazeera Media Network, said:
Al Jazeera Media Network welcomes the news of Mahmoud’s freedom and believes that no journalist should ever be subjected to what Mahmoud has suffered for the past four years for merely carrying out his profession.
Today, we are pleased he is finally reunited with his family, after being robbed four years from his life and deprived of his fundamental rights.
We wish Mahmoud a speedy recovery and hope he will be able to overcome this past ordeal and start a new chapter in his distinguished career.
The 54-year-old was arrested in Cairo, the Egyptian capital, on December 23, 2016, while visiting his family for a holiday.
Egypt’s Ministry of Interior publicly accused him of “disseminating false news and receiving monetary funds from foreign authorities in order to defame the state’s reputation” but the journalist was never formally charged.
Hussein’s release on Saturday comes a month after Egypt and Qatar restored ties following a Gulf summit held in al-Ula, Saudi Arabia.
Al Jazeera is a Qatari-headquartered media company whose broadcasts are not well received by some Middle-eastern governments.
