12/4/2009
The journalist, Wael Lutfi, in Ros El Yousef is facing an imprisonment sentence in a publication case
The Misdemeanor Court of Kasr El Neel will issue a judgment in case no. 10279 0f 2008 in its session dated 29 April 2009. This case is filed by one of the citizens last December requesting the punishment of the journalist, Wael Lutfit and the head of the board of director of Ros El Yousef magazine Mr. El Sayed Abdallah accusing them of libeling and slandering him. The claimant wanted to punish the defendants in accordance with articles no. 302/1, 303 and 306 and article no. 171 of the Penal Code.
In this regard, the magazine of Roz El Yousef has published a journalistic article in its issue no. 4172 in page no. 58 entitled “ Why the police arrested a witch from his house and did not arrest him while he was practicing his activities in a satellite channel”. It was decided to hear the case in its session dated 18th October 2008 and a judgment will be issued in this session.
The journalist Wael Lutfi, 38 years old is the deputy of the editor-in-chief of Ros El Yousef and he is one of the defendants in the phenomenon of new callers and messengers and he published a lot of articles on analyzing he phenomenon of new messengers in 2005 and he received the prize of the State in 2005 for his book “ The phenomenon of new messangers” in which he talked about how those new callers used all means to publish their thoughts.
In this context, FDHRD is calling all Legal and Civil Associations to be in solidarity with the journalist as he is expressing his opinion and thoughts but he was hindered by the Legislative structure organizing the journalistic work in Egypt which put a lot of constrains on the freedom of journalism in modernizing the society and do not allow media to practice their mediating role in solving the problems of society.