Foreign correspondents are carrying their work without restrictions: SIS

Cairo – 27 September 2019: Egypt’s State Information Service (SIS) highlighted in a Friday statmnet the foreign correspondents coverage for Egypt’s events and protests since the early morning.

SIS issued several comments and stated it as following:

• Representatives of International Media outlets and especially correspondents registered by the State Information Service in Cairo have been carrying out their coverage since the morning of September 27th up until 7 pm. Only one field complaint has been filed, and it involved the brief detention of 2 photojournalists near Al Istikama Mosque during Friday prayers in Giza, Mohamed El Shahed and Farid Youssef who are employed by France 2.

• This happened when Security forces asked them for their photography permits, which they did not have with them despite the fact that those permits were granted to them by SIS. The detention did not exceed 2 hours, as SIS intervened by sending the permits of the 2 photojournalists and they were released promptly and allowed to operate freely.

• The foreign correspondents carried out their work freely and their coverage is still ongoing. And its worth mentioning that 41 accredited Media and Press establishments submitted to SIS requests for televised and photographic coverage for 195 journalists and photographers. All requests were accepted and the applicants have been granted permits for completely free coverage and photo taking in all the squares and main streets of the governorates of Cairo, Giza, Qalubiya, Alexandria and Suez in accordance with international customs.

• There are 900 accredited representatives of foreign media outlets registered with SIS and all of them operate freely in their none photographic coverage in all parts of the republic without restrictions.

• In addition to that all visiting correspondents are still operating freely and carrying out their coverage freely; Also in the past 2 days 30 visiting correspondents representing 15 foreign media and press establishments have applied for press permits and IDs to cover Friday. Permits were issued to 15 of them, and the rest were granted permits as well even though they applied on Thursday the 26th of September.