EGYPT: Authorities told 'not to bother' human-rights activists, journalists, prime minister says

EGYPT: Authorities told ‘not to bother’ human-rights activists, journalists, prime minister says

Feb. 6, 2011 12:34 PM PT

Share via
- Email
- Facebook
- X
- LinkedIn
- Threads
- Reddit
- WhatsApp

This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.

Egyptian Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq told CNN on Sunday that authorities had been instructed “not to bother” human-rights activists and journalists covering anti-government protests.

Any such problems are “not intended at all,” Shafiq told CNN’s Candy Crowley on “State of the Union.”
His comments came amid reports of fresh arrests Sunday, including a correspondent for Al Jazeera English.

News network Al Jazeera said the journalist, Ayman Mohyeldin, was detained by the Egyptian military near Tahrir Square and called for his immediate release.

“I will go directly to check this point,” Shafiq told Crowley. “But they are not allowed at all to do something like that.”

— Alexandra Zavis

Egypt vice president offers new concessions

Clamor for change reaches Iraq

Full coverage of Egypt uprising: News, photos, videos and more

Babylon & Beyond

Alexandra Zavis

Alexandra Zavis is a former writer and editor on the Los Angeles Times’ Foreign Desk who has reported from more than 40 countries. She spent a decade with the Associated Press, covering Liberia, Sierra Leone, Congo, Sudan, Somalia, Iraq and Afghanistan, among other war-torn places. After joining The Times in 2006, she has served as a Baghdad correspondent and as a California reporter covering poverty and veterans issues. She is a recipient of the American Academy of Diplomacy’s Arthur Ross Award for distinguished reporting on foreign affairs and was part of teams of reporters awarded the Society of Professional Journalists’ Sigma Delta Chi Award for foreign correspondence and APME’s International Perspective Award. She is a graduate of Oxford University and City University in London.

EGYPT: Authorities told ‘not to bother’ human-rights activists, journalists, prime minister says

The Self-Realization Fellowship Lake Shrine was surrounded by flames. Then a family came to its rescue

Mapping the damage from the Eaton and Palisades fires

Amid dangerous winds in 2011, LAFD engines stood ready. That didn’t happen this time

Here are the famed movie and TV locations destroyed in the Southern California fires

Lessons from the burn zone: Why some homes survived the L.A. wildfires