The military trial of photographer Mohamed Sabry, who was arrested Friday by the army at the border city of Rafah, has been postponed to 9 January, according to Mona Seif, a fellow activist at the No to Military Trials Campaign.
Sabry is a member of the group, and is also a blogger, freelance journalist and head of the 4 Sinai website, which focuses on Sinai-related news. He was arrested while filming border guards at checkpoints.
In a statement Sunday, the group said that Sabry had been working on a news story related to the killing of 16 Egyptian soldiers in Rafah in August 2012 when he was arrested.
Sabry faces charges of being in a military zone and photographing military properties. The military prosecutor in Arish decided to detain him for four days pending investigation, and he was initially taken to the central prison in Arish.
His wife, Riham Abdel Aziz, told Al-Masry Al-Youm that upon arriving in Arish to attend the investigations with her husband, she found he had been transferred to Ismailia prosecutors instead.
Abdel Aziz has tweeted a request for help from a lawyer specialized in military-related matters. In its statement, No to Military Trials said that she has not yet been allowed to see her husband.
The campaign added that Sabry was in the military zone performing his job as a journalist, and had no intentions of breaking the law. The statement declared that the group was in full solidarity with Sabry and reiterated its stance against military trials for civilians.
In a statement on Facebook Sunday, Armed Forces Spokesperson Ali Ahmed Ali said that no information on the Armed Forces can be published without the involvement of the official military spokesperson.
In August of last year, militants attacked a checkpoint near the border with Israel in Rafah, killing 16 soldiers and leading to a military mobilization in the region.
Edited translation from Al-Masry Al-Youm
