Egypt jails editor charged with insulting president

Egypt's Giza Criminal Court on Thursday ordered the editor of a daily newspaper be jailed until 16 September , state television said. Prosecutors told the court that Islam Afifi, editor of the liberal al-Destour newspaper, is accused of spreading false news insulting president Morsi and inciting sectarian tensions and publishing inaccurate information. The court announced the decision on Thursday to give Afifi’s lawyers time to prepare their defence. Islamists have filed several cases against journalists accusing them of inciting violence. Afifi's supporters gathered outside the court and shouted slogans denouncing the decision to jail him until the trial resumes September 16. Al-Destour, owned by a Christian businessman, claimed in several issues that Morsi had become president through vote fraud and warned that his election could trigger a sectarian war in Egypt. Meanwhile the court will next month hear a case against television talkshow host Tawfiq Okasha, a critic of Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt's largest political group. He is accused of inciting violence against Morsi. Okasha's privately owned Al-Faraeen broadcaster, which means the Pharaohs, was taken off the air for a month after he suggested that the Brotherhood was behind militant attacks that killed 16 Egyptian soldiers in the Sinai Peninsula. Others journalists also facing trial for "insulting the president," include the editor-in-chief of Egyptian weekly Sawt Al-Omma, Abdel-Halim Qandeel, and editor-in-chief of the weekly Al-Fagr, Adel Hamouda.