CAIRO: Egyptian police arrested a television show host yesterday after a court sentenced him to a year in prison for slandering an actress, a police official said.
Police stormed Abdullah Badr’s apartment early in the morning in the Nile Delta province of Sharqiya and took him into custody so he could start serving the sentence, the official said.
A court had convicted the fiery preacher and television show host for insulting actress Elham Shahin, who had sued him. It also fined him 20,000 pounds ($ 2,900/2,197 euros).
According to press reports, he had accused her of promiscuity
The television station that hosted Badr’s show, Al-Hafez, airs religious programing and talk shows, and is one of a crop of broadcasters that have been accused of airing extremist thought. Abu Islam Ahmed Abdullah, an owner of another television station, is facing trial for tearing apart a bible during an anti-American protest in Cairo.
Several journalists and media figures have been questioned or charged since President Muhammad Mursi won elections last June. Most have been critics of Morsi.
Under Egyptian law, private citizens can sue for defamation, even if they were not the subject, and possibly have the defendant jailed if a court takes up the complaint.
Mursi critic detained
In another incident, a prominent opponent of Egypt’s President Mursi has been detained on suspicion of insulting the leader, the activist’s lawyer said yesterday.
Ahmed Douma, a blogger and activist who has called for Mursi’s trial over the shooting deaths of protesters, was ordered held for four days by prosecutors in the Nile Delta city of Tanta, lawyer Ali Soliman told AFP.
The prosecutors were investigating a complaint accusing Douma of insulting Mursi, filed by a member of Mursi’s Freedom and Justice Party, Soliman said. He said Douma turned himself in on Tuesday.
Mursi, elected last June, has been accused of cracking down on opposition and critical journalists.
The presidency says it has withdrawn several complaints it filed against journalists accused of fabricating reports about Mursi, but most complaints were brought by private citizens.
The state prosecutor last month opened a new investigation into television satirist Bassem Youssef on suspicion of “threatening public security.”
Youssef, who regularly skewers the country’s ruling Islamists on his wildly popular show, was released on $ 2,200 bail after an interrogation that lasted nearly five hours.
Since taking office, Mursi has faced waves of sometimes deadly unrest led by a loose coalition of secular leaning parties and youth protest movements that helped oust president Hosni Mubarak in 2011.
Several dozen people have died in clashes with police or in street fighting between Morsi’s Islamist loyalists and the opposition.
The Muslim Brotherhood, on whose ticket Mursi ran in the election, had filed a complaint against Douma among other activists, accusing him of inciting violent clashes outside its headquarters in March.
