A new summons for Mada Masr’s editor-in-chief highlights the continuing pressure on one of Egypt’s few remaining independent newsrooms—and on the public’s right to know.
Lina Atallah, editor-in-chief and co-founder of Mada Masr, was summoned to appear before Egypt’s Supreme State Security Prosecution on October 21, 2026, in a new criminal investigation. In its announcement of the summons, published two days earlier, the newsroom said the document did not explain why she was being called for questioning. It is the sixth case brought against Mada Masr, its editor and its journalists in six years.
Amnesty International has called on the Egyptian authorities to end the judicial harassment of Atallah and her colleagues. The organization describes the successive investigations as an attack on independent reporting that challenges the state-controlled narrative.
The most recent previous summons came on August 4, 2025, following Mada Masr’s reporting on deteriorating detention conditions at Badr 3 prison. Atallah was questioned on accusations including spreading false news and operating a website without a license, then released on bail pending investigation. Amnesty notes that the outlet has unsuccessfully sought a license since 2018.
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05 October 2024Behind these proceedings is a newsroom born from the disappearance of another journalistic space. Atallah and her colleagues established Mada Masr after the closure of Egypt Independent in 2013. As the publication recounts in its own founding story, the decision grew out of the need to secure a home for independent journalism that could no longer survive within mainstream organizations.
Mada Masr began publishing on June 30, 2013, amid mass demonstrations and deep political polarization. Its stated ambition was to pursue questioning, inquisitive journalism, approaching stories from different angles rather than reducing them to opposing camps. The newsroom’s survival has kept that ambition alive through years of pressure.
Under Atallah’s leadership, its reporting has examined high-level corruption, prison administration, the influence of security institutions and the experiences of Sudanese refugees. The International Center for Journalists, which awarded her its Knight International Journalism Award in 2020, recognizes Mada Masr as one of the few remaining sources of independent news in Egypt.
The latest summons also belongs to a wider crackdown. Amnesty links it to the recent arrest of six journalists from the fact-checking platform Matsadaash, held in pretrial detention. Citing the Committee to Protect Journalists, the organization reports at least eighteen journalists jailed in Egypt. Hundreds of websites remain blocked, including Mada Masr.
Repeated investigations place demands on the time and resources a newsroom needs to report. Documents must still be examined, sources contacted, testimonies checked and editorial decisions debated, while journalists also have to defend their ability to continue working.
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Explore the yearbooks →Atallah’s story resonates with the commitment behind ChannelDraw’s Drawing Resistance: bringing individual faces into view while recognizing the wider struggles they represent. A portrait can draw attention to the person facing pressure and invite readers to look more closely at her work.
As in In the Crosshairs of Memory, where drawings preserve the names and faces of journalists killed in Gaza, the circumstances must remain distinct and the individual visible. Portraying Lina Atallah means acknowledging the editor, her colleagues and the reporting they continue to produce. Their work concerns a right shared by every reader: the freedom to seek information, question authority and understand the society in which they live.
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