And after than 24 hours of strange arrest and detention circumstances, popular social media cartoonist Islam Gawish was released without any charges or bail on Monday.
The story of Gawish's strange arrest and release started on Sunday when he was arrested from his work by security forces for the most bizarre reasons ever: For running an unlicensed website in Egypt.
Islam Gawish, a 26-years old cartoonist is popular among social media for his simple doodle comic Facebook page "Al-Warka" aka "The Paper".
It started Sunday afternoon when we found a post from Gawish's colleague and the manager of "ENN" website he works at declaring that the security forces stormed the office and arrested the 26-years old cartoon allegedly for drawing anti-Sisi and anti-regime comics !!
That alarming post was confirmed by Islam Gawish's official comics Facebook page "Al-Warka" which declared that it would suspend its activities till his release. That post was deleted later from the FB page.
For hours news websites kept sharing a strange list of accusations: managing an unlicensed website, having unlicensed software in the company, running unlicensed Facebook page, broadcasting false news.
According to my knowledge, Gawish is not the owner of ENN and he is only a graphic designer in the news site !!!
He only manages his Facebook page "Al-Warka" and this does not need any license from anyone !! He does not broadcast news but rather draws cartoons for God's Sake !!
Anyhow , hours later the ministry of interior issued an official statement announcing that after receiving a tip that ENN was back online to broadcast news without a permit, the security forces went to search the website headquarter arrested for Islam Gawish , who is responsible for graphics at ENN headquarter and the confiscation of two harddrives and a router !!
The statement also added that it turned out that Islam Gawish was running a website "Facebook page" without having license "!!" and he was running fake pirated software on his computer !! "AKA windows OS !!"
The story of Gawish's strange arrest and release started on Sunday when he was arrested from his work by security forces for the most bizarre reasons ever: For running an unlicensed website in Egypt.
Islam Gawish, a 26-years old cartoonist is popular among social media for his simple doodle comic Facebook page "Al-Warka" aka "The Paper".
Islam Gawish "FB account" |
That alarming post was confirmed by Islam Gawish's official comics Facebook page "Al-Warka" which declared that it would suspend its activities till his release. That post was deleted later from the FB page.
For hours news websites kept sharing a strange list of accusations: managing an unlicensed website, having unlicensed software in the company, running unlicensed Facebook page, broadcasting false news.
According to my knowledge, Gawish is not the owner of ENN and he is only a graphic designer in the news site !!!
He only manages his Facebook page "Al-Warka" and this does not need any license from anyone !! He does not broadcast news but rather draws cartoons for God's Sake !!
Anyhow , hours later the ministry of interior issued an official statement announcing that after receiving a tip that ENN was back online to broadcast news without a permit, the security forces went to search the website headquarter arrested for Islam Gawish , who is responsible for graphics at ENN headquarter and the confiscation of two harddrives and a router !!
The statement also added that it turned out that Islam Gawish was running a website "Facebook page" without having license "!!" and he was running fake pirated software on his computer !! "AKA windows OS !!"