Mada Masr

Mada Masr's Report on the President's Son (Egypt) In November 2019 Mada Masr reported that Mahmoud al-Sisi, the president's eldest son, had been moved out of a powerful intelligence post to a diplomatic mission in Russia. Few outlets in Egypt would touch the inner workings of the security state at all. The response was swift. Reporter Shady Zalat was arrested at home, and the next day plainclothes officers raided the Cairo office, seized phones and laptops and briefly detained editor-in-chief Lina Attalah and two colleagues. The pressure never stopped: in October 2026 a Cairo court fined Attalah for running a website without a licence and ordered Mada Masr closed, a first-instance ruling her lawyers are contesting.