Egypt has been called on by Amnesty International to release a veteran journalist who has been detained since May 21, 2021.
Urging Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi to free 66-year-old Tawfik Ghanem, the rights group expressed its demand in a post written on Sunday on Twitter.
The post expressed that “he has already spent 300 days unjustly behind bars for his media work. He is denied adequate health care for his multiple health problems and held in horrid conditions.”
On March 19, an Egyptian court decided to extend Ghanem’s detention for another 45 days.
Ghanem’s home in Cairo was raided by security forces on May 21 last year, while he was detained without an arrest or search warrant.
Ghanem’s career as a journalist spans more than 30 years, during which he also held managerial positions in many media organizations.
Ghanem served as general manager of Media International from 1999 to 2010, a media company that pioneered the development of digital broadcasting and online journalism in the Arab world.
Ghanem also worked as the Arabic news editor of Anadolu Agency from 2012 until his retirement in 2015.
