Egypt: Police arrest cartoonist and satirist Ashraf Omar in dawn raid
Egyptian security forces have arrested Ashraf Omar, a cartoonist for the independent news outlet Al-Manassa, at his home in Cairo early on Monday.
According to Omar’s wife, Nada Mougheeth, Omar was led away blindfolded into a vehicle by security forces, who also confiscated a large sum of money and his computer.
“The cartoons of our colleague Ashraf Omar did not violate any law nor attack anyone, and therefore Al-Manassa considers it unacceptable that he was taken away blindfolded at dawn,” Al-Manassa editor-in-chief, Nora Younis, wrote in a letter to Khaled El-Balshy, the chair of the Journalists Syndicate, calling on him to intervene in the case.
El-Balshy issued a statement condemning Omar’s arrest, demanding his release and calling on the authorities to reveal where he was being kept.
He declared the union’s “full solidarity” with Omar and affirmed his “fundamental right as a journalist to express citizens' suffering through his drawings".
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Al-Manassa also called on the public prosecutor, Mohamed Shawky Ayyad, to “clarify the journalist’s situation, announce his place of detention and the charges against him, and facilitate a meeting with his lawyer.”
Omar had published several cartoons satirising Egypt’s electricity crisis, economic policies and its sale of state assets to Gulf countries.
According to Reporters without Borders, 18 journalists remain in Egypt’s prisons. The media watchdog ranks Egypt 170 out of 180 countries in its World Press Freedom Index.
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