CAIRO: Freed Australian journalist Austin Mackell lashed out at the Egyptian military junta and state television shortly after his release from two days of detention, where he was accused of bribing locals to “incite” and cause violence in the northern Nile Delta city of Mahalla on Saturday. Speaking to The World Today, Mackell said he was not a spy and that he had heard a number of people being tortured and beaten in the rooms next to where he, translator Aliya Alwi and American student Derek Ludovici were being held. “This is the standard line: that the people who are protesting, that the people who are fighting for their rights in any regard, are actually being paid by foreign agents,” he told The World Today. “This is the line that state TV has run with on a number of occasions in similar cases, and it's what happened with us as well.” According to Mackell, he was covering the first day of a general strike called for by activists and labor movements on Saturday and had made the journey to Mahalla to report on the happenings in the city. “On the anniversary of the fall of [Hosni] Mubarak, I was hoping to meet with a man called Kamal al-Fayyumi who is a famous labor organizer in Egypt,” he said. “I was with a masters student who's doing his [research] on labor movements in Egypt and my translator and the driver. “And when we did get there we got out of the taxi and basically had a chance to say hello, and then after that we were almost immediately mobbed by a group of people calling us spies, you know, foreigners, spies.” He praised and thanked Egyptian activists for supporting him throughout the ordeal. “I've only realised coming out how hard they've all been batting for us, so I've got a huge amount of gratitude,” he said. “The fact that the Egyptian activists with all the problems they're facing… found time to worry about someone like me.” The journalist and his translator were arrested on Saturday evening, and the two have been charged with “incitement” and bribing residents to commit acts of violence and have been transferred to a prosecutor's office. Mackell and translator Aliya Alwi had been covering the protests taking place in the northern Egyptian town – the flashpoint of protests in 2008 – as part of the general strike that began on Saturday in Egypt when the military police arrested them. Alwi reported at 7 PM local time on Saturday that they had been transferred to the military prosecution in Tanta, about an hour north of Cairo. Many online referred to this change as “worrying.” Mackell, an Australian national and journalist based in Egypt has written extensively from Egypt, having been published in major international newspapers and publications including The Guardian UK. The pair have worked together regularly in Egypt. Alwi, still able to send messages on her Twitter account Saturday evening, wrote “Report against us, filed now. Many witnesses saw us ‘offering money to youth to vandalize and cause chaos'.” Their situation is being monitored closely by fellow media professionals and activists in the country, who have condemned the military's use of violence and intimidation against media personnel in recent months. Shortly before their arrest, the vehicle they were riding in was attacked, glass broken and Alwi was called a “whore,” she wrote on Twitter. Their arrest has sparked continued concern over the treatment of journalists, both local and foreign, in the country. Over the past few months, a number of reporters have been accosted by the military, detained and threatened for attempting to do their job. The day before Mackell and Alwi were arrested, two Italian photographers were detained in the Abbassiya neighborhood of Cairo while covering the protests in the area. They have been told to leave the country, witnesses said. BM ShortURL: http://goo.gl/U7lYE Tags: Austin Mackell, featured, Jail, Mahalla Section: Egypt, Latest News, Media, Oceana
