In 2007, Sheik Tantawi of al Azhar University, Egypt's highest religious authority and closely allied to the regime, issued a fatwa declaring that a journalist filing an incorrect report deserved to be lashed eighty times.
The edict came amid a broader and heavy-handed press crackdown, described by one enraged blogger as "nothing short of a massacre of Egypt's independent press," with editors of four independent newspapers arrested, sentenced and fined. The justification? They were fou...
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