Egypt Prosecutors Investigate Popular Comedian

Egyptian prosecutors launched an investigation on Tuesday against a popular satirist for allegedly insulting the president in the latest case raised by Islamist lawyers against outspoken media personalities.

Lawyer Ramadan Abdel-Hamid al-Oqsori charged that media host Bassem Youssef insulted President Mohammed Morsi by putting the Islamist leader’s image on a pillow and parodying his speeches.

The case against Youssef comes as opposition media and independent journalists are growing increasingly worried about press freedoms under a new constitution widely supported by Morsi and his Islamist allies.

Other cases have been brought against media personalities who have criticized the president. Some of the cases have ended with charges being dropped. Morsi’s office maintains that the president has nothing to do with legal procedures against media critics.

On Tuesday, the independent daily Al-Masry Al-Youm, one of Egypt’s most widely-circulated newspapers, said Morsi’s office filed a complaint accusing it of “circulating false news likely to disturb public peace and public security and affect the administration.”

The paper had published a report earlier this week attributed to sources saying that Morsi was due to visit the hospital where ousted President Hosni Mubarak is receiving treatment after being injured in his prison cell. Mubarak is serving a life sentence for failing to stop the killing of nearly 900 protesters during the uprising against him.

A visit by Morsi would have inflamed public anger. The paper later updated the story to say that Morsi’s wife had only visited a relative in that hospital.

The paper said a reporter and an editor were summoned for interrogation.

A local committee of journalists and editors has called for stronger guarantees of press freedoms and a rejection of the current constitution, fearing it allows for jailing journalists under broadly-worded articles regarding media offenses.

Also Tuesday, police said they arrested a suspect in a shooting that seriously wounded a protester in Cairo’s central Tahrir Square, where an open-ended sit-in protesting the Morsi regime is taking place.

This article appeared in print on page D4 of the January 2nd, 2013 edition of Hamodia.