Police criminal crackdown on Reuters over Regeni affair

[Hafiz]

'An Egyptian police official filed a criminal complaint against Reuters after the news agency published an article last week connecting the police to the disappearance of an Italian student, Giulio Regeni, prosecutors said on Saturday.

The article, citing security officials, said the police detained Mr. Regeni days before his brutalized body turned up on the outskirts of Cairo — contradicting government assertions that he had not been arrested.

The complaint, filed Friday, accused Reuters and its Cairo bureau chief of spreading false news and harming Egypt’s image, raising new alarms about a crackdown on journalists in Egypt.

Prosecutors said on Saturday that they were investigating the complaint.
………
On Thursday, Reuters published an article citing six unnamed intelligence and police officials who said that Mr. Regeni was detained by plainclothes police officers on the day he disappeared.

The officials told Reuters that Mr. Regeni was taken to the Izbakiya police station, near downtown Cairo, and held for half an hour before he was transferred to a facility run by Egypt’s homeland security agency.

The officials quoted in the Reuters article said they did not know what happened to Mr. Regeni after he was detained.

In a statement issued on Saturday, a Reuters spokesman, David Crundwell, said the article “did not state who is responsible for his death, and is consistent with Reuters’ commitment to accurate and independent journalism.”
…….
The article broadly matched the accounts of a witness and three security officials who spoke to The New York Times in February and said that Mr. Regeni was taken into police custody on Jan. 25. One of the security officials said that the authorities were suspicious of Mr. Regeni in part because of his research on labor movements in Egypt.'

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/24/world ... .html?_r=0

With 10 sources for police involvement no wonder the Italians remain unconvinced.

If Reuters is kicked out and others cowered by this who will be trusted to tell the truth - al Ahram?