State Security summons journalist Rasha Azab amid press crackdown
Egyptian judicial authorities have ordered prominent journalist and human rights defender Rasha Azab to appear before the Supreme State Security Prosecution on Monday for interrogation in an unspecified security probe, marking the latest escalation in a widening state crackdown on the country’s independent press.
Azab announced Sunday that security forces delivered an official summons to her family’s home on Saturday, ordering her to report for questioning in connection with Case No. 8025 of 2026 (Supreme State Security).
“The message is clear, and my response is clear: Long live the struggle of journalists; down with the journalism of security directives; freedom for the detainees; freedom and life for the Egyptian people,” Azab wrote on X.
Following standard State Security Prosecution procedures, the summons did not detail the specific accusations or the underlying facts under investigation.
The summons did not surprise Rasha in the least, she told Al Manassa, emphasizing that she views the measure as inseparable from the broader, aggressive assault on independent media, punctuated most recently by the arrest and imprisonment of journalists working for the fact-checking platform Matsadaash.
Azab’s legal counsel went to the prosecution office following the delivery of the notice to ascertain the grounds for the inquiry. They discovered that the case file predates the arrest of the Matsadaash editors, leading them to believe the investigation likely stems from earlier social media posts or published opinions.
“My theory is this: these people cook up cases against us and shelve them in a drawer until the time comes to use them,” Azab said. “Whether this summons came because of a tweet or because of what happened over the past couple of days, the outcome remains the same to me: there is an ongoing onslaught.”
Azab directly linked the summons to her active solidarity and continuous presence inside the Egyptian Journalists Syndicate in recent days, specifically pointing to an open sit-in she staged with several colleagues at Syndicate headquarters on Saturday to protest the detention of the Matsadaash journalists.
Azab made no attempt to conceal her role in the sit-in or the backing of her colleagues.
“I do not declare solidarity in secret,” Azab stated to Al Manassa. “I state plainly that I went to the Syndicate, I stand alongside my colleagues, I take photographs of them, and I perform my journalistic duty by covering what has unfolded inside the Syndicate over the past few days.”
She characterized the legal harassment as an overt attempt at state coercion designed to silence critical reporting across the board.
“What they are doing to me is part of deterrence tactics, and I understand the message,” she added. “It is a message I reject outright. Deterrence and intensified intimidation will not resolve the crisis. Egypt suffers from a severe crisis of freedoms, and the regime continues to dismantle every permissible outlet for free expression, even the legitimate and formal spaces guaranteed by law and journalistic practice.”
The summons follows a protracted pattern of state surveillance and intimidation directed at Azab. In December 2024, she staged an open-ended sit-in inside the Journalists Syndicate to protest what she identified as systematic security operations calculated to upend her personal safety, including persistent street harassment and the unresolved theft of her vehicle in Cairo’s Zamalek district.
She launched the protest after exhausting all available domestic legal channels, following the refusal by both the Qasr Al-Nil police station and local prosecutors to release area surveillance footage or provide updates regarding her official complaint.
During that period, Amnesty International urged Egyptian authorities to immediately halt their “disgraceful intimidation campaign” targeting Azab and demanded that the Public Prosecutor open an immediate investigation into her complaints.
The rights group noted that Azab, an outspoken critic of the Egyptian government’s diplomatic and political stance toward the conflict in Gaza, had faced persistent intimidation and threats following the outbreak of hostilities on October 7, 2023.
Those incidents included repeated stalking by three unidentified men and multiple warnings delivered through intermediaries warning that state security agencies planned her arrest.
Mary Lawlor, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders, similarly condemned the targeted pressure at the time, demanding an immediate end to the harassment and calling on authorities to guarantee Azab’s safety.
“Disturbing news from Egypt that HRD [human rights defender] and journalist Rasha Azab is facing surveillance and threats from suspected security agents following her peaceful protests against the Gaza war,” Lawlor stated on X.