An Egyptian journalist, Hossam Al Wakeel has been detained by security forces, after his arrest while covering a demonstration in Egypt’s second largest city, Alexandria, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported. 20 year-old Al Wakeel, a reporter with the Egyptian daily newspaper, Al Dustour, was reportedly working on a story on the “arbitrary closure” of the Al Jazeera School in the Al Agami district of the city. Al Wakeel, who was arrested alongside a number of other protesters, was accused of “assaulting and defaming a law-enforcement officer, breaking tree branches” and “blocking street traffic.” If convicted, he could face up to three years in prison. The Editor of Al Dustour, Ibrahim Mansour, claimed that the journalist was singled out for persecution because “the state security police have been harassing him and urging him to stop writing for our daily.” Mansour told CPJ that the purpose of Al Wakeel’s detention was to “again warn Al -Dustour of the consequences of continuing on the road to independent journalism . ”
