CAIRO: The prosecutor’s office at Qasr El-Nil on Saturday began investigating a complaint filed by political dissident Gamila Ismail accusing the chief editors of seven newspapers and websites of libel and defamation.
The publications in question ran stories accusing Ismail’s son Shady of cheating at his exams at the Cinema Institute. Ismail filed the complaint to the electronic crimes department citing the newspapers’ websites. The complaint was later referred to the prosecution office.
State-run dailies Al-Ahram, Al-Akhbar, Al-Gomhuria and Rose Al-Yousef, in addition to the independent online news portal, Masrawy, are among the seven media outlets.
Al-Ahram Chief Editor Osama Saraya told Daily News Egypt that his newspaper respects the personal life of citizens and political activists.
“We publish stories professionally, and if any story is proven wrong, we apologize immediately,” Saraya said.
After the stories were published, some of which included a photo of her son talking to a professor during the exam, Ismail filed a complaint to the Minister of Culture, threatening to sue the Institute Dean, Adel Yehia and the professor in the photo.
The professor in the photo also threatened to sue the Institute.
Yehia quickly held a press conference to deny the cheating incident.
Yehia said that the professor in question was not teaching the course in which Shady was being examined at the time. Therefore, that professor could not help him cheat in a course she does not teach or know anything about herself.
Shady, citing psychological damages, didn’t attend the rest of the exams.
Ismail told Daily News Egypt that she decided to file the complaints demanding compensation after the publications in question continued to run the cheating story despite what Yehia said at the press conference.
Ismail said that she accused Chief Editors Abdullah Kamal of Rosa Al-Yousef, Osama Saraya of Al-Ahram, Mohammed Barakat of Al-Akhbar, and Mohammed Ali Ibrahim of Al-Gomhuria with deliberate defamation of her family as part of a government political attack against them.
Ismail is the former wife of Ayman Nour, the former Member of Parliament and current chairman of El-Ghad opposition party.
