Journalist told to leave Egypt or face trial

A BRITISH journalist has been arrested, threatened with trial in a military court and deported from Egypt.

Bel Trew, Cairo correspondent for The Times, was detained by police in late February while doing an interview in a café in the Egyptian capital.

She was held for several hours without access to a lawyer or British diplomats, she said, and was then told she could either get on a flight out of Egypt or face military prosecution.

“Less than 24 hours after I was first detained, I was marched on to a plane with nothing but the clothes I was standing up in. The choice before me – stay for a military trial or leave – was no kind of choice,” Ms Trew wrote in an article about her experience.

Egypt’s government has cracked down on media outlets, and independent Egyptian journalists are routinely harassed and jailed. But it is unusual for a correspondent from a major Western newspaper to be arrested.

“The circumstances of her detention and the threats made against her were sufficiently outlandish to suggest that a mistake had been made, based on a misunderstanding,” The Times said. “It is now clear that the authorities have no intention of allowing her to return.

“The Times deplores this attempt by the Egyptian authorities to intimidate the media and suppress our coverage.”

Egypt is among the worst countries in the world for press freedom and is ranked 161 out 180 on the 2017 World Press Freedom Index.

A policeman was killed by a bomb yesterday targeting the security chief of Alexandria, officials said, two days before the start of presidential election. The car bomb, which exploded near a convoy transporting Gen Mostafa elNemr, also wounded four others.