Egypt’s Sisi: Defaming army, security forces is treason

Insulting the army and the security forces is “high treason”, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi, warned yesterday.

Speaking at a ceremony to inaugurate a number of projects in Egypt’s Al-Alamein city in the country’s North Coast, Sisi said: “The army and police forces represent all the Egyptians.”

“I want to tell the media, if someone insults the army or police they’re defaming all Egyptians and that’s not freedom of opinion,” Al-Sisi said.

“It is inappropriate to defame the army and police, who have been dying for the country’s safety and security,” the Egyptian leader noted.

“Honestly speaking, defaming the army and the police forces, legally, for me now equals treason,” he added, stressing: “We will not allow it.”

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Al-Sisi called on the media to “help us [the Egyptian government] to confront offending the military.”

On Wednesday, Egypt’s top prosecutor called for taking “legal” action against media outlets found to be publishing “false news”.

Legal officials told Reuters that the charge of treason must only be directed to civil servants “if the public official had contact with a foreign country during wartime.”

Last month, Egypt’s army launched a major military operation, titled “Sinai 2018” in the Sinai Peninsula aiming to crush a Daesh insurgency that has been targeting security forces and most recently civilians.

Critics have questioned the operation saying it is another means through which Al-Sisi is quashing dissenting voices and silencing opponents. Since he came to power in a military coup in 2013, Al-Sisi has arrested opposition members, jailed them and left them facing trial in unfair courts which do not allow them a defence. Extrajudicial killings of prisoners have also been reported in Sinai.