The fallout from former Culture Minister Gehan Zaki’s resignation following a court ruling ordering the withdrawal of her book “Coco Chanel and Qut Al-Qulub” from the market continues to grow. An academic and political controversy has now evolved into a legal and professional dispute after both the Judges Club and the Journalists Syndicate became involved.
The dispute escalated after the Egyptian Judges Club filed complaints against journalists and TV hosts Mostafa Bakry and Mohamed El-Baz over their comments on the ruling, while the Journalists Syndicate moved to shield its members from possible criminal prosecution.
The Court of Cassation had issued a final, unappealable ruling finding Gehan Zaki guilty of infringing intellectual property rights and ordering her book withdrawn from circulation after determining it contained “unjustified verbatim quotations” from “The Lady of the Palace: The Assassination of Qut Al-Qulub Al-Demardashiya.” The court also ordered her to pay 100,000 Egyptian pounds (about $2,000) in compensation to its author, Al Ahram journalist Sohair Abd El Hamid.
The day after the ruling, the prime minister announced that he had accepted the minister’s resignation. According to the cabinet, Zaki said she stepped down “to spare the government embarrassment over this personal matter.”
Judges Club files complaints
Bakry hosts El-Baz on his program "Facts and Secrets," July 10, 2026The complaint to the public prosecutor was not the only action announced by the Judges Club. In a statement obtained by Al Manassa, the club also said its board had filed a complaint with the Supreme Council for Media Regulation accusing the two journalists of “overstepping the limits in commenting on court rulings and interfering in the administration of justice.”
The club’s board, headed by its newly elected president, Judge Mohamed Rifaat Gaber, said the complaint stemmed from last Friday’s episode of “Facts and Secrets” on Sada El Balad. It argued that comments made during the program exceeded the constitutional and legal limits governing discussion of judicial rulings, amounted to impermissible interference in judicial affairs, and constituted “an attack on the judiciary and an attempt to undermine confidence in final court rulings.”
The Judges Club statement added that the program deliberately sought to incite public opinion against one of the state’s authorities in a way that could undermine its standing and weaken public confidence, in violation of constitutional and legal provisions protecting judicial independence and the authority of court rulings.
The club stressed that freedom of expression is not an absolute right and cannot be used as a pretext to undermine judicial independence, urging media outlets to report accurately and responsibly on the judiciary.
“An impartial committee”
On the program, Bakry defended the former minister’s record, while Al-Dostor Chairman Mohamed El-Baz called Zaki “one of the most capable leaders” and said her resignation spared the government embarrassment by offering “a refined model for managing disagreement.”
Although El-Baz said he respected the ruling, he argued that the book remained open to scholarly debate, called for the formation of “another impartial committee” to review the case outside the courts, questioned the plagiarism finding, and suggested an editor may have inserted copied passages into the book without Zaki’s knowledge. He said the controversy had been exaggerated in a way that could deprive the cultural scene of an important figure.
Syndicate intervention
A senior Journalists Syndicate source told Al Manassa that the syndicate’s board had launched efforts to manage the dispute with the Judges Club in defense of Bakry and El-Baz.
The source, who requested anonymity, said the syndicate sought to have the complaint handled through the syndicate and resolved amicably to avoid criminal penalties that could include prison sentences. The move was based on previous understandings with the Public Prosecution under which the syndicate has jurisdiction to conduct disciplinary investigations into publication-related cases involving its members.
The source added that direct communication with the Judges Club had led El-Baz to issue a formal apology yesterday, describing it as a positive step and an acceptable basis for resolving the dispute, despite some reservations about its wording.
As the crisis escalated, El-Baz posted an apology on Facebook, saying he never intended his comments about the ruling in former Culture Minister Gehan Zaki’s case to offend Egypt’s judiciary, question its rulings, or undermine their authority, and apologized for his remarks during his appearance on Mostafa Bakry’s program, reaffirming his respect for the Egyptian judiciary.
Asked whether the Judges Club board had accepted El-Baz’s apology or the Journalists Syndicate’s mediation efforts, a judicial source on the club’s board told Al Manassa that there had been no direct contact between El-Baz and the Judges Club. The source added that the syndicate’s mediation proposal remained under review and that no decision had been made before publication.
The dispute recalls the high-profile 2014 case in which the Judges Club filed similar complaints against former President Mohamed Morsi and 19 politicians and media figures, including Alaa Abdel Fattah and Tawfik Okasha, over comments on court rulings in Hosni Mubarak’s trial. They were later sentenced to three years in prison for insulting Egypt’s judiciary.
Syndicate investigation
Despite defending El-Baz as one of its members, the syndicate had also referred him for an internal disciplinary investigation, journalist Sohair Abd El Hamid revealed last night, saying the decision followed a complaint she had filed.
Abd El Hamid told Al Manassa that her complaint was entirely separate from El-Baz’s dispute with the Judges Club. It dates back to Feb. 26 and was filed “in response to two front-page headlines published by El-Baz in Al-Dostor that defamed and insulted me. The first was titled ‘Why Did Sohair Abd El Hamid Lie?’ and accused me of falsely claiming that Dr. Gehan Zaki had stolen my work, even though I already had a first-instance ruling from the Economic Court.”
She said El-Baz followed up in the next issue with an article titled “Why Did Sohair Abd El Hamid Steal?” accusing her of “ignorance and of stealing the idea for my book on Qut Al-Qulub Al-Damardashiya from an earlier novel by Hala El Badry, even though I had published articles about the same historical figure in Nisf El Donia magazine in 2005, before El Badry’s novel was published.”
The syndicate source confirmed that El-Baz had been referred for investigation, explaining that the decision had been taken before the Judges Club issued its latest escalatory statement. However, the syndicate deliberately delayed announcing it to avoid creating the impression of polarization or a reciprocal confrontation.
“We chose not to announce it at that moment so it wouldn’t appear that each side was trying to settle scores with the other,” the source said.
