Egypt - Hosni Mubarak
Mubarak pardons editor sentenced for report on president's health
Tuesday 07 October 2008
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has pardoned an outspoken editor sentenced to two months in jail after his newspaper published rumours about Mubarak's health.
Tuesday 07 October 2008
By ReutersCAIRO - Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak on Monday decreed that an outspoken editor need not serve the two-month jail term to which he was sentenced last month for his newspaper's reporting on the president's health.
The state news agency MENA said Mubarak issued the decree "to affirm his solicitude for freedom of opinion and expression ... and to ensure that there be no feud between him as president and any Egyptian citizen".
An appeals court in Cairo sentenced Ibrahim Issa, executive editor of al-Dustour newspaper, on Sept. 29 and Issa said at the time that he would start serving the sentence immediately.
But his office said on Monday that he had not gone to prison. Judicial sources said the Journalists Syndicate had appealed to the public prosecutor's office for a stay of sentence while the case went through another legal process.
The court found Issa guilty of publishing false news in 2007 about Mubarak's health in a way that damaged the national economy by encouraging capital flight.
Rights organisations were critical of the sentence, one of several in recent years that have come close to putting prominent journalists behind bars for publishing offences.
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