Egypt releases Al Jazeera journalist Ahmed Al-Najdi

Cairo: The Egyptian investigative authorities on Wednesday released Al-Jazeera journalist Ahmed Al-Najdi, whom Cairo had held in pretrial detention on charges of spreading false news.

67-year-old Ahmed Al-Najdi, who has been detained since August 2020, was freed from prison.

Al-Najdi is a journalist with Al Jazeera Mubasher, the live TV unit of the Qatar-based network.

Tariq el-Awady, a member of the presidential pardon committee in Egypt, wrote on his Twitter account that he welcomed “the Egyptian Public Prosecution’s decision to release the Al Jazeera journalists who are being held in pretrial detention”.

As per the media reports, the release of the journalist came despite the renewal of his pretrial detention for 45 days, on August 26, exceeding 700 days of pretrial detention, amid calls from his family to release him as a result of the deterioration of his health. The family also stated that Al-Najdi has exceeded 70 years in age.

Al-Najdi was suffering from an injury on his foot as a result of diabetes and feared having to amputate his foot. However the Egyptian authorities did not respond to his family’s pleas to transfer him to a private hospital at his own expense.

This news comes at a time when Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi concluded, on Wednesday, a two-day visit to Qatar, during which he met the Emir of the Gulf state, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani.

Al Jazeera Media Network has repeatedly called on the Egyptian authorities to release Al-Najdi and his three colleagues on Al Jazeera Mubasher, who are being held without charge— Hisham Abdel Aziz, Bahauddin Ibrahim and Rabie el-Sheikh, who were being held in detention “without trial or charge”.

Egypt has become one of the largest prisons in the world for journalists, after it ranked third in the list of countries that detain the largest number of journalists, after China and Myanmar.

Likewise, Egypt fell to 168th out of 180 countries in the Press Freedom Index for 2022, according to the international classification issued by Reporters Without Borders, on the occasion of World Press Freedom Day on May 3, 2022.