Police raid office of Egyptian investigative media outlet Mada Masr and detain three staff
- Mada Masr, which is mainly concerned with investigative reports, is among hundreds of news websites blocked by Egyptian authorities
An independent Egyptian media outlet said that security forces raided its office in Cairo on Sunday and arrested three of its staff, who were later released.
Mada Masr said on Twitter that nine plain clothes security forces entered its office by force in the afternoon and confiscated staff members' laptops and phones and asked some of them to unlock theirs.
Chief editor Lina Attalah and journalist Mohamed Hamama were subject to periodic questioning for three hours by the forces inside the office, the outlet said.
Attalah, Hamama and one other journalist were taken to an unknown prosecutor's office, it added, but later reported that they were released from Dokki police station.
Mada Masr said that the forces also questioned two foreign journalists, Ian Louis and Emma Scolding, and took them away separately to their homes to get their passports. They were also freed.
Earlier in the day, a Mada Masr journalist who was not present at the time of the raid told dpa that he was prevented from entering the office when he arrived in the afternoon. A lawyer for the media outlet was also prevented from entering.