An Egyptian court fined the head of a broadcasting company yesterday for operating without a licence, judicial sources said, after the firm aired shots of protesters stamping on a picture of the country’s president. The court ordered Nader Gowher, chairman of Cairo News Company, to pay 150,000 Egyptian pounds ($27,000) for possessing satellite communications equipment and operating a network without a licence.
Images from an anti-government labour protest taken by Cairo News Company had been aired on stations including pan-Arab satellite channel Al Jazeera. Gamal Eid, a lawyer representing the company, said the ruling was a result of broadcasting images from the protest. “The security agencies succeeded in presenting a scapegoat but they cannot extinguish the anger of the people expressed in what happened to the picture,” he told Reuters.
Three people were killed and nearly 150 injured over two days of unrest in the Nile Delta textile town of Mahalla el-Kubra in April, the culmination of more than a year of strikes by workers at a giant state-run factory.
Arab governments, led by Egypt and Saudi Arabia, have sought to entrench state control over broadcasters. Arab states passed a satellite charter this year which echoes language found in press laws used by some Arab countries to prosecute journalists critical of their governments.
(Source: Reuters)
