Mada Masr rejects judicial council statement over Lina Attalah’s appeal
Egyptian independent news outlet Mada Masr denied on Sunday that its editor-in-chief, Lina Attalah, waived her right to appeal a judicial ruling against her, pushing back against claims by the Supreme Judicial Council that she paid a 3 million Egyptian pound fine and formally signed away her right to challenge the verdict.
The rebuttal followed an unusual sequence of events on Saturday evening, when the council issued a statement attempting to justify the court’s rejection of a defense motion to adjourn proceedings in the case, where Attalah faces charges of operating a website without a license.
Two hours later, authorities retracted the post from the Egyptian Court of Cassation’s official Facebook page and substituted a revised draft that excised the court’s rationale, replacing it with assertions that Attalah paid the mandated fine and submitted a written waiver relinquishing her right to appeal.
Attalah’s defense team affirmed in a statement on Sunday that she at no point waived her legal right to lodge an appeal within the statutory deadline. Defense counsel stated that lawyers went to the New Cairo Prosecution on Sunday to institute appeal proceedings against the Oct. 27 ruling, but received no response to their petition by close of business, while authorities withheld both the case file and an official copy of the verdict.
Last Tuesday, the Ninth Circuit of the New Cairo Misdemeanor Court delivered a maximum-penalty verdict in the opening session of Case No. 11743 of 2026.
The judge slapped Attalah with a 3 million Egyptian pound fine, mandated the closure of Mada Masr, and ordered the confiscation of its operational equipment and devices over charges of establishing and administering an online platform prior to receiving statutory authorization from the Supreme Council for Media Regulation (SCMR).
The controversy began Saturday at 9:30 pm when the Court of Cassation’s official page broadcast the Supreme Judicial Council’s initial release to counter what it termed social media claims calling into question the guarantees of a fair trial. The council asserted that the official minutes of the session rebutted all allegations of procedural breach.
According to the council’s narrative, the public prosecution had referred Attalah to trial for operating without media council authorization. Attalah appeared in court backed by her full legal team, which submitted a list of motions and sought an adjournment to review the case file. The council claimed the bench granted lawyers access to the brief.
The court authority subsequently caught observers off guard by purging the post, republishing an altered statement at 11:41 pm that introduced structural amendments to the official account of courtroom events.
Al Manassa’s line-by-line comparison between the two statements revealed that the modifications targeted the second paragraph, specifically the judge’s handling of the defense’s motion to examine the docket.
In the initial, retracted version, the Supreme Judicial Council admitted that the court denied the postponement request. The original dispatch argued that defense counsel’s insistence on pushing proceedings to an upcoming session constituted an unjustified elongation of litigation within the court’s discretionary powers.
It maintained that because the case was ripe for adjudication, the court activated statutory provisions to safeguard the defendant’s right to representation by seconding a state-appointed lawyer, who received clearance to examine the case file and mount a defense.
In the late-night revision, the council struck every phrase justifying judicial discretion or accusing counsel of dragging out litigation. The redrafted text replaced the explanation with an assertion holding the defense culpable, claiming the court afforded defense counsel access to the case file, but the lawyers refused, prompting the court to appoint substitute counsel who reviewed the documents and presented the defense.
Beyond this substitution, the altered publication injected an unexpected procedural claim that took Mada Masr’s attorneys by surprise, reiterating that following the imposition of the shutdown order and the 3 million pound fine, Attalah executed payment immediately and signed the prescribed formal waiver abandoning her right to appellate review.
The defense team disputed the council’s accounting, denying any abandonment of appeals. Defense counsel emphasized that it initiated resistance against what it described as procedural breaches on the very day of the trial, filing an immediate grievance on Oct. 27 with the head of the New Cairo Court.
That petition urged an inquiry into the judge’s refusal to provide lawyers with photocopies of the case file, the imposition of a court-appointed attorney despite the recorded objections of the defendant and her retained counsel, the presiding judge’s transcription of motions attributed to the court-appointed lawyer without the latter having examined the brief, and the judge’s refusal to register a formal recusal request demanding his removal from the proceedings.
The defense escalated the challenge on Oct. 29 by sending a registered complaint with acknowledgment of receipt to the Assistant Minister of Justice for Judicial Inspection. The memo detailed violations including the unlawful exclusion of the public by clearing the courtroom for part of the hearing, and the fabrication of court minutes by attributing formal defense pleas to the state-appointed attorney that the appointed lawyer never spoke, read, or argued.
The defense noted that despite documenting these violations, authorities have yet to inform the legal team of any action taken regarding the grievance, nor have they called any team members for questioning, including the official legal representative of the Egyptian Journalists Syndicate who attended the hearing as a witness.
Mada Masr has pursued regulatory licensing under Egypt’s press laws for years, submitting an initial petition to the Supreme Council for Media Regulation in 2018 that yielded no official response. Following the issuance of the law’s executive regulations in 2020, the outlet submitted a secondary petition that authorities similarly ignored.
During a 2022 interrogation involving Attalah, the editor-in-chief discovered that the media regulator had rejected the outlet’s license application without notifying the platform or furnishing legal justifications. While Mada Masr challenged that rejection before the courts, a subsequent licensing application filed in 2023 remains pending without an official response.