An Egyptian newspaper editor has landed an extra two weeks in jail for allegedly accepting bribes in exchange for halting his paper’s “defamation campaign” against a producer, which involved calling the man a “car dealer” and “real estate broker.”
A Cairo judge extended the imprisonment of the technical editor at the weekly newspaper Al Maydan, Mohammed Mohammed Al Mursy, after learning that the journalist might have received 10,000 pounds as a bribe from the producer, who was trying to stop the paper’s “defamation campaign.”
A two-day probe carried out by prosecutor Osama Qandil found that the editor had defamed the producer and his family, labeling him a “car dealer” and “real estate broker.”
He confronted the defendant with secretly recorded telephone conversations in which Mursy asked for 15,000 pounds from the producer.
The investigations also revealed that a journalist at one of the morning newspapers had refused the defendant’s request to ask the producer for a bribe, calling him a beggar – Albawba.com
