Chris Van Hollen

A court ordered a leading independent Egyptian news site closed on Tuesday ​after its editor-in-chief was convicted of running the site without ​a licence and taken into custody pending bail, ‌her ​lawyers and the outlet said. Lina Attalah of the news site Mada Masr, which has won numerous international awards for its reporting, was fined 3 million Egyptian pounds ($53,400), her lawyers told Reuters. The court ‌gave her the maximum penalty, ordering the website to be shut down and its equipment confiscated, Mada Masr said in a statement. After prosecutors referred Attalah to trial last Thursday, a group of 119 rights groups and media outlets, including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the Committee ‌to Protect Journalists, called the case an "unprecedented attack on press freedom". US Senator Chris Van Hollen said in a statement on the social ‌media platform X on Friday that the charges were baseless and that "journalism is not a crime". Egyptian authorities say the state...