afrol News, 2 May - ’Al-Jazeera’ journalist, Huwaida Taha Mitwalli, was sentenced to six months in jail by a criminal court in the Egyptian capital Cairo after found guilty of exposing pictures of torture. She was also fined 20,000 Egyptian pounds (US $3,518).

Huwaida Mitwalli, also a journalist of the London-based daily, Al-Quds al-ArabiAlso sentenced to the equal punishment was Al-Quds al-Arabi on charges of "possessing and giving false pictures about the internal situation in Egypt that could undermine the dignity of the country", which was in connection with an Al-Jazeera documentary she has compiled on torture in Egypt.

The Egyptian journalist has been freed on bail in Qatar.

The New York-based Human Rights Watch said the delivery date of the sentence – a day before the world celebrates press freedom – portrays the “emblematic nature of Egypt's worsening crackdown on freedom of expression.”

Egyptian security officers on 14 April arrested Abd al-Monim Mahmud, a television journalist and blogger at Cairo airport as he tried to board a plane for Sudan, where he was to work on a television story about human rights abuses in the Arab world for the London-based ‘Al-Hiwar’ satellite channel.

On 12 March, the Alexandria Court of Appeals upheld the four-year prison
sentence against another blogger, Abd al-Karim Nabil Sulaiman, who was jailed for criticising Islam and the Egyptian President, Hosni Mubarak.

Mohammad al-Sharqawi, who was a victim of police torture, on 20 March returned home only to find that his laptop containing unbroadcast video of police abuse stolen. The thieves however left his cash and other valuables in the apartment intact.

By staff writer

© afrol News

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