Egypt’s Last Independent Newsroom on Trial: Lina Attalah’s Retrial Adjourned as the UN Warns of ‘Assaults on Press Freedom’

A court in Cairo has postponed the retrial of Lina Attalah, the editor-in-chief of Egypt’s leading independent news site Mada Masr, after her lawyers asked for a new judge to hear the case. The hearing, which opened on Wednesday, 11 November 2026, was adjourned until 18 November — and it comes as the United Nations warns of “widening assaults on press freedom” by the Egyptian authorities.

Attalah is being retried on charges of spreading false news and running a website without a licence. She was sentenced in her absence in 2024 to a year in prison on those charges, but she only found out about the sentence two weeks ago — while she was being released from custody after a separate court ordered her news site to close.

Her case has become the most closely watched press freedom trial in Egypt in years. Rights groups say it will decide whether independent journalism can survive at all in the Arab world’s most populous country.

At a glance

• What happened: A Cairo criminal court adjourned Lina Attalah’s retrial until 18 November 2026, after her defence lawyers asked for the judge to step aside.
• Who she is: Attalah is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of Mada Masr, Egypt’s leading independent news site, founded in 2013.
• The charges: Spreading false news and running a website without a licence. She was sentenced in absentia in 2024 to one year in prison.
• The other case: On 27 October 2026, a separate court fined Attalah 3 million Egyptian pounds (roughly $55,000) and ordered Mada Masr to close. Her appeal against that ruling is due to be heard on 25 November.
• The wider picture: The UN says Egypt is carrying out “widening assaults on press freedom”, and Reporters Without Borders ranks Egypt 169th out of 180 countries for press freedom.

What happened in court on 11 November

The opening hearing of the retrial was held at a criminal court in Cairo on Wednesday morning. Attalah’s lawyers asked for the presiding judge to remove himself from the case, arguing that he had already formed an opinion against their client.

The judge is Mohamed Mubarak — the same judge who presided over the 27 October hearing in the separate case, when he fined Attalah and ordered Mada Masr to shut down.

Her lawyer, Hassan al-Azhar, told Mada Masr that the defence had asked the judge to step aside because he had “already formed a conviction” against her. The judge went into recess, then adjourned the hearing for a week so the Court of Appeals could decide on the request. The retrial is now set to resume on 18 November.

Reuters reported that the defence had also asked to change the judge because he had ruled against Attalah in the earlier trial. Egypt’s Supreme Judicial Council has rejected suggestions that the trial was unfair.

Who is Lina Attalah — and what is Mada Masr?

Lina Attalah is one of Egypt’s best-known journalists. She co-founded Mada Masr in 2013, and the site grew into the country’s leading independent news outlet, known for investigative reporting on politics, economics, human rights and regional conflicts.

Mada Masr was set up 13 years ago, in the years after Egypt’s 2011 uprising, when a new generation of journalists tried to build newsrooms free from state control. It became a vital source of reporting that Egyptians could not find in the state-controlled press.

But the space for that kind of journalism has shrunk steadily. The site has been blocked inside Egypt since 2017, so readers inside the country can only reach it through workarounds. Its journalists have faced repeated summons, interrogations and legal cases.

Attalah herself has been called in for questioning by prosecutors six times in the last few years. The October case was the first time she was sent to trial.

The 27 October ruling: a fine, a closure order — and a shock discovery

The case that brought Attalah to court on 27 October began a week earlier. On 21 October, she was questioned by State Security prosecutors over the charge of running a website without a licence. She was released on bail of 100,000 Egyptian pounds (about $1,800), and six days later she was in court.

The hearing moved at a speed that Egyptian courts rarely reach. The judge refused to adjourn the case so the defence could read the case file or submit evidence, and he appointed a lawyer for Attalah over her objections, even though her own eight-member legal team was in the room. Journalists were kept out during key stages of the hearing.

After a single hearing, the New Cairo Misdemeanours Court convicted Attalah of operating a website without a licence, fined her 3 million Egyptian pounds — the maximum penalty the law allows — and ordered Mada Masr to close, with its equipment to be confiscated once the verdict becomes final.

Attalah was held in custody for several hours after the verdict. Mada Masr paid the full fine that evening, and she was released. Amnesty International called the verdict “a crushing blow to press freedom”.

It was during the release process that Attalah learned something she had never been told: another court had convicted her in absentia in 2024 and sentenced her to a year in prison, plus a fine of 2 million Egyptian pounds, on charges of spreading false news and running an unlicensed website. She had been living in Egypt the whole time, and says she was never informed that she had been charged, tried or sentenced.

Her lawyers challenged that ruling, which is what forced the retrial that opened on 11 November. If the retrial goes against her, she faces a year in prison.

The licence that never came

At the heart of both cases is a single charge: running a website without a licence. The charge comes from a media law passed in 2018, which requires news websites to be licensed by the authorities.

Mada Masr says it applied for a licence under that law — and never received a reply. Attalah has said the outlet has had no response from the authorities since 2023, despite repeated attempts to regularise its position.

That is why her supporters say the licensing charge is not really about paperwork. In their view, the law gives the authorities a simple tool to close down any newsroom they dislike: refuse the licence, then prosecute the journalists for not having one.

The Egyptian authorities have not responded to Reuters’ requests for comment on the case. They have repeatedly said the state is committed to freedom of expression, but that media must operate within the law and respect national security.

The United Nations steps in

On Tuesday, 10 November, the United Nations human rights office spoke out. Its spokesperson, Thameen Al-Kheetan, warned of “widening assaults on press freedom by Egyptian authorities, including the targeting, persecution and harassment of independent journalists”.

He said Attalah’s prosecution raised “fresh concerns regarding due process and fair trial”, and called on Egypt to end all forms of persecution of journalists and media outlets, and to reverse the measures aimed at suppressing Mada Masr.

The UN also raised the case of six journalists from the fact-checking platform Matsda2sh, who were arrested in home raids in September. They have been charged with joining the Muslim Brotherhood and financing terrorism — charges the UN says should be dropped. Al-Kheetan called for the six journalists to be released.

The pressure has not come only from the UN. The prosecution has drawn condemnation from the European Union and from members of the US Congress. More than 130 media organisations and rights groups, including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the Committee to Protect Journalists, have described the crackdown as unprecedented. The Committee to Protect Journalists has called on the Egyptian authorities to end the crackdown, reverse Mada Masr’s shutdown and uphold constitutional protections for press freedom.

The BBC asked US Secretary of State Marco Rubio whether he had raised the treatment of independent journalists when he met Egypt’s Foreign Minister, Badr Abdelatty, in Paris on Monday.

“A chilling message”

Attalah herself has been clear about what she believes is happening. Speaking to the BBC, she said the crackdown was meant to “send a chilling message” to “the very few newsrooms that are left” in Egypt.

In an interview with the news agency AFP, she went further, calling the prosecution “an attempt to silence the last surviving traces of the free press”.

In her own account of the case, published days before the retrial, she described the 27 October hearing as a “five-minute judicial performance” that ended 13 years of journalism. She wrote that she hopes to come out of court and return to her newsroom, and to keep reporting, “until the late hours of the day”, alongside the young journalists she works with.

She also made a point that goes beyond her own case: that journalists should not be jailed, not only as a moral position, but as a right written into Egypt’s constitution.

How bad is press freedom in Egypt?

The numbers are stark. Reporters Without Borders ranks Egypt 169th out of 180 countries in its 2026 World Press Freedom Index. The organisation says at least 26 journalists remain in detention in Egypt.

The Committee to Protect Journalists counts 25 journalists behind bars in the country, making Egypt one of the world’s biggest jailers of journalists.

Egypt has largely stifled freedom of the press over the past decade. Independent outlets have been blocked, closed or bought up. The few that remain operate under constant legal threat. Mada Masr was one of the last — and, by many accounts, the most important — independent newsrooms still standing.

That is why human rights groups describe the Attalah case as a litmus test. As Reuters put it, the case is seen as a test of whether independent journalism can survive in Egypt at all.

Why this matters

The Attalah case matters for reasons that go beyond one journalist and one newsroom.

First, it shows how licensing laws can be used as a weapon. A government does not need to ban journalism outright if it can simply refuse to license the journalists it dislikes, and then prosecute them for working without a licence. That is a pattern seen in many countries, and Egypt’s case is now one of the clearest examples of it.

Second, the in-absentia sentence raises serious questions about fair trial. Attalah says she was tried and sentenced without ever being told. Her lawyers only discovered the sentence by chance, during her release from custody. The UN has singled this out as a due process concern.

Third, the timing matters. The crackdown comes as Egypt’s government faces growing scrutiny over its human rights record, and as the country plays a central role in regional diplomacy.

And fourth, if Mada Masr — with its international profile and global support — can be shut down in a single afternoon hearing, smaller and less protected newsrooms have little chance.

What happens next

Two court dates now matter.

The first is 18 November 2026, when Attalah’s retrial is due to resume — assuming the Court of Appeals has decided on the request for a new judge. If the retrial goes ahead and she is convicted, she faces up to a year in prison on the false news charge, plus a fine of up to two million pounds on the licensing charge.

The second is 25 November 2026, when her appeal against the 27 October ruling is due to be heard. That ruling ordered Mada Masr to close and imposed the 3 million pound fine. If the appeal fails, the closure order stands and the site’s equipment can be confiscated.

In the meantime, Mada Masr continues to publish. The closure order is being appealed, and the outlet’s journalists are still working — though now under the shadow of a case that could put their editor in prison.

The coming two weeks will show whether Egypt’s courts offer Attalah a fair hearing, or whether the trial becomes another step in the closure of the country’s last independent newsroom.

Frequently asked questions

Who is Lina Attalah?

Lina Attalah is an Egyptian journalist and the co-founder and editor-in-chief of Mada Masr, Egypt’s leading independent news website. She has worked as a journalist for more than a decade and is one of the country’s best-known editors.

What is Mada Masr?

Mada Masr is an independent Egyptian news site founded in 2013. It is known for investigative reporting on politics, economics, human rights and regional conflicts. It has been blocked inside Egypt since 2017.

What is Attalah charged with?

She is being retried on charges of spreading false news and running a website without a licence. She was sentenced in absentia in 2024 to one year in prison on those charges, but only learned of the sentence on 27 October 2026.

Why was her retrial adjourned on 11 November?

Her lawyers asked for a new judge, arguing that Judge Mohamed Mubarak had already formed an opinion against her because he had presided over the 27 October hearing that fined her and ordered Mada Masr to close. The court adjourned the case until 18 November so the Court of Appeals can decide on the request.

What happened on 27 October 2026?

A court in New Cairo fined Attalah 3 million Egyptian pounds (roughly $55,000) and ordered Mada Masr to close, after convicting her of operating a website without a licence. She was held in custody for several hours and released after the fine was paid. Her appeal is due to be heard on 25 November.

Why does the United Nations say press freedom is under attack in Egypt?

The UN human rights office has warned of “widening assaults on press freedom” by the Egyptian authorities, including the targeting, persecution and harassment of independent journalists. It has raised concerns about due process in Attalah’s case and called for the release of six journalists from the fact-checking platform Matsda2sh.

How does Egypt rank for press freedom?

Reporters Without Borders ranks Egypt 169th out of 180 countries in its 2026 World Press Freedom Index, and says at least 26 journalists remain in detention in the country.

Sources

• Reuters — “Egyptian court postpones retrial of independent news site’s editor”
• BBC News — “Egyptian journalist’s retrial adjourned as UN warns of ‘assaults on press freedom'” (full text reproduced at The Hona News)
• Egyptian Streets — “Egypt’s Mada Masr Chief Lina Attalah’s Trial Postponed”
• Graphic Online — “UN raises alarm over press freedom as Egyptian journalist’s retrial is adjourned”
• Lina Attalah — “Egypt: fighting to expand the margins of journalism”

This article is for general information and education only. It is not legal or financial advice.