CAIRO (AP) – Egyptian authorities on Saturday released an Al-Jazeera journalist after more than four years in detention, said his family’s lawyer.
Mahmoud Hussein left a police station on Saturday afternoon, a few days after a court ordered his conditional release pending investigations into allegations of publishing false information and belonging to a prohibited group, said lawyer Gamal Eid.
The lawyer said Hussein will have to report to a nearby police station twice a week.
The journalist’s daughter, el-Zahraa Hussein, confirmed the news in a Facebook post, saying her father had arrived home. Al-Jazeera also released his release.
Hussein, an Egyptian who worked for the Qatari satellite network, was detained at Cairo airport in December 2016, when he arrived on vacation with the Doha family, the network said.
Since the overthrow of Muslim Brotherhood president Mohamed Morsi in 2013, Egyptian authorities and pro-government media have portrayed the Al-Jazeera network as Egypt’s national enemy for its sympathy for Islamists, especially the Brotherhood’s illegal group. Muslim.
The network, especially its Arab service, and its team are involved in a broader political divide between Cairo and Doha. Egyptian authorities have blocked the Al-Jazeera news site since 2017, along with dozens of other news sites considered to be very critical of the government.
Hussein’s release came a month after Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain ended the dispute with Qatar, which began in 2017 and included the four countries that broke diplomatic and diplomatic economic ties with energy-rich Qatar.
The four countries have accused Qatar of approaching Iran and financing extremist groups in the region. Doha denied the charges. Al-Jazeera was at the center of the dispute. The four nations demanded its closure, among other measures, which Qatar rejected.
Egypt ranks last in the press freedom index. It ranks third on the list of the greatest jailers of journalists, behind China and Turkey, according to a report by the Committee to Protect Journalists released in early December.
In recent years, authorities have launched a broad crackdown on dissidents, arresting thousands of people, mainly Morsi’s Islamic supporters, but also several well-known secular activists.