Egypt: Entire editorial staff of Matsadaash media arrested, 34 organizations demand their release

The six journalists who made up the editorial staff of Matsadaash, an Egyptian investigative and fact-checking platform, were arrested by security forces between September 28 and 29, 2026, reports the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). According to the organization, this is the most severe blow dealt to an independent Egyptian media outlet in years: an entire newsroom has disappeared in forty-eight hours.

The CPJ identified the six journalists as: Mohamed Ashraf Abou Emeira, editor-in-chief, arrested at his home, followed by Abdallah Qadry, Islam Barakat, Omar Helal, Mohamed Mahmoud, and Mohamed Adel, the latter two arrested at dawn in Cairo.

The authorities' accusations

On October 2, 2026, the Egyptian Ministry of the Interior presented Matsadaash as an unauthorized platform operated from abroad, and accused it of seeking to destabilize the country through disinformation. The authorities link it to the Muslim Brotherhood, an organization classified as a terrorist group by Cairo since 2013. No public evidence has been produced to support this link, according to press freedom organizations.

The media outlet's founder, Abdelrahman Mansour, rejects these accusations and asserts that his platform has no affiliation with the Muslim Brotherhood. Created in 2018, Matsadaash — "Don't believe it" in Egyptian Arabic — specialized in verifying public statements and information circulating online. The detained journalists are entitled to the presumption of innocence, and no judicial proceedings have been concluded at this stage.

Sit-in in Cairo and international appeal

Dozens of Egyptian journalists organized a sit-in in Cairo to demand the release of their colleagues. An international appeal signed by 34 organizations, including Reporters Without Borders, the CPJ, Human Rights Watch, and the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR), is calling for the disclosure of the detention locations and for the detainees to have access to their families and lawyers.

"The arrest and apparent disappearance of six journalists from the same newsroom," declared Sara Qudah, the CPJ's regional director, constitutes a serious escalation. According to RSF, Egypt ranks 169th out of 180 in the 2026 World Press Freedom Index, and between 24 and 26 journalists are currently detained there for their professional activities, according to counts by various organizations.

The Matsadaash case raises a question that goes beyond Egypt: in several countries on the continent, the fight against disinformation is used as an argument to silence those whose job is precisely to verify facts. Defending the rights of Africans also means defending their right to independent information.