An Egyptian journalist was arrested early Saturday after his independent fact-checking website published articles accusing “officials” of involvement in the scandal, AFP reported Sunday.

Egypt on the mapPhoto: Ignacio Ruiz Casanellas / Alamy / Profimedia Images

Karim Assaad “was arrested at 1:00 a.m. on Saturday at his home by plainclothes security forces,” according to his website, “Matsada2sh.”

“They beat his wife, threatened his child, ransacked his house and kidnapped him, taking him to an unknown destination,” said the platform, founded in 2018 in London.

The journalists’ union called on the authorities to “release” Assaad and “reveal his whereabouts.”

“The only questions the attackers asked were about our reports on the Egyptian and Zambian planes,” Matsada2sh said.

This week, Zambian authorities announced the seizure of a plane at Lusaka International Airport and the arrest of ten people, including nine foreigners.

According to them, the plane was carrying almost 5.7 million dollars, five revolvers, 126 bullets and almost 130 kg of ingots, which for some time were passed off as gold.

Independent Egyptian journalists have posted on social media documents they say are part of a Zambian court file, claiming the accused are Egyptian and some are believed to be army and police officers.

State media claimed it was a private plane, not the Egyptian state’s, and that it “passed through Cairo”.

“The government’s only response so far has been the arrest of Karim Assaad of Matsda2sh, one of the few sources of information on the subject,” activist Lobna Darwish of Egyptian Human responded to X (ex-Twitter) on Saturday night. Legal Initiative (EIPR).

According to Matsada2sh, the site’s team and its social media accounts are “under a coordinated attack”: two articles were “removed from (its) Facebook page” due to an investigation that found “the involvement of several Egyptian officials”.

“We consider the Egyptian authorities responsible for the safety of our teams,” she added.

Egypt ranks 166th out of 180 in Reporters Without Borders’ 2023 press freedom ranking. According to Egypt’s trade union, 24 journalists have been detained so far, including Assaad.