Al Jazeera journalists arrested

Reporters Without Borders (Reporters sans frontières - RSF) protested today to the Egyptian government about the arrest of two journalists from the Qatari TV station Al Jazeera, cameraman Mohamed Izz-Eddin En-Najjar and sound engineer Mohamed Eid Jalal. "We ask that arbitrary arrests like this do not happen again and that you ensure the media can freely do their work," RSF secretary-general Robert Ménard said in a letter to interior minister Habib Ibrahim Habib al-Adli. According to the information collected by RSF, the two journalists were picked up on the morning of 5 March in Alexandria after they had filmed a student demonstration at the university in support of the Palestinian people and the second Intifada. They were arrested as they were putting their equipment back in their vehicle and police seized their camera, film and the vehicle. The cameraman was freed nearly three hours later and the sound engineer the following afternoon. The authorities said they had been arrested because they did not have permission to film inside the university. The material has been restored to the team.