A popular YouTuber known as “Super Maher” is the latest social media personality to be arrested on charges related to inciting debauchery or immorality using the internet.

An Egyptian woman who appeared online with a swollen and bruised face to tell how her friend raped her has been arrested by security forces.

The Egyptian government has expanded its crackdown on free expression to target YouTubers and social media influencers, particularly women, detaining and prosecuting several in recent weeks.

Egypt’s president pardoned on Saturday thousands of prisoners including a former policeman jailed over killing a Lebanese pop diva more than a decade ago, according to the official gazette.

Egyptian security forces arrested almost a dozen people on accusations of fabricating content for the Al Jazeera news network, the interior ministry said in a statement.

Egyptian security forces have arrested a journalist and former researcher for the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information.

Egyptian authorities have been holding hundreds, and most likely thousands, of people in pretrial detention without a pretense of judicial review in a new low for the country’s justice system, Human Rights Watch said today.

Attalah was released on bail by the Maadi Prosecution shortly following her arrest. She posted bail to the tune of EGP 2,000. 

Egypt’s Ministry of Interior announced on Friday evening that popular TikTok star Mawada Eladhm had been arrested a day earlier on charges of “violating family principles and values in Egyptian society” and “establishing, managing and using [websites and social media accounts] with the aim of committing those crimes”.

Egyptian officials have jailed the relatives of President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s loudest critics in exile. It is his latest effort to silence all opposition.