The Egyptian photojournalist was first arrested while reporting in September 2016. A decade of detention, restrictions and criminal proceedings later, his trial has been postponed again.
On 27 September 2026, Hamdi El-Zaeem’s lawyers went to court for a hearing at which the prosecution was expected to present its arguments. The hearing did not proceed. According to Egyptian independent outlet Al Manassa, the court adjourned the case because security authorities had not brought some defendants to the hearing. El-Zaeem’s defence had not been informed of a new date when it reported the postponement.
The previous day marked ten years since El-Zaeem was first arrested. That does not mean he has spent ten uninterrupted years in prison. His decade has included pretrial detention, conditional release with regular reporting to the police, a second arrest and years of renewed detention. No final conviction has been issued against him. Sixteen Egyptian and international organisations have called for his immediate release.
El-Zaeem’s legal name is Hamdi Mokhtar Ali. He is a photojournalist and producer who has worked on political and human-interest stories for Egyptian news outlets. On 26 September 2016, he was arrested near the Journalists Syndicate while reporting. He remained in pretrial detention until June 2018, when he was released under conditions that required him to report regularly to the authorities. The charges were not dropped.
Egypt: from the archive
He was arrested again in January 2021. Prosecutors accused him of offences including spreading false news, misuse of social media and membership of a terrorist organisation. Those are allegations, not findings of guilt. According to the organisations calling for his release, he was unable to contact his family or lawyer for twelve days before appearing before prosecutors. His case was referred to trial in January 2025.
The ten-year anniversary makes the passage of time impossible to overlook. A camera confiscated, work interrupted, days spent reporting to the police, hearings awaited and postponed: these are consequences that extend far beyond a case number. The organisations supporting El-Zaeem also describe the strain on his health and on his family, including his four children.
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Explore the yearbooks →His story belongs alongside those in ChannelDraw’s Faces of Journalism Under Detention, which gives names and faces to journalists deprived of their freedom. It also recalls the question running through the work on Patrick Zaki: what happens to a person’s life while the legal process continues year after year?
For Hamdi El-Zaeem, the answer is measured in a decade. The latest postponement adds more waiting. The demand made by the sixteen organisations is clear: end his detention and allow him to return to his family and his work.
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