Photojournalist Mohamed Alaa from Al-Dostour newspaper was released by the prosecution on Tuesday after he was arrested while covering the elections runoff in Giza.
A coordinator in the independent observatory Journalists Against Torture (JATO) told Daily News Egypt that Alaa was arrested after a dispute between him and one of the military men guarding a polling station. Alaa was taking photos of the committee, but the military man allegedly thought he was taking photos of the forces standing outside the school.
Alaa is a trainee in the privately owned Al-Dostour newspaper and is currently on his second year of studying mass communication.
On the first day of parliamentary elections runoff, JATO documented 18 cases of violations against reporters across the 14 governorates. Giza was ranked the city with most violations with 14 cases of banning coverage, arrests, and the confiscation of media equipment.
Alaa is among dozens of other reporters and photojournalists arrested whilst covering stories in recent months, certainly in the wake of the 30 June uprising.
Twelve journalists are currently still in detention, according to a census by the international watchdog for journalists rights, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), on arrested journalists in Egypt. However, the number of those that have been detained and released is much higher.
