Al Jaz Cairo correspondent charged

Hussein Abdel Ghani, Al Jazeera's bureau chief in Cairo, has been charged with "spreading false news" two days after he was arrested. I had heard that he had been arrested because Al Jazeera helped spread the rumor that Interior Minister Habib Al Adly would soon be sacked. Instead there was this lame excuse:

The interior ministry said Mr Abdel Ghani's arrest concerned the false reporting of an explosion in Sharkia on Wednesday.

The reporter has denied the charges against him

A spokesman said: "[Hussein Abdel Ghani] said there were incidents in Sharkia and nothing happened. He's spreading confusion.

"When he said there was an explosion in Sharkia, leading everyone to ask about it, about something that didn't happen, where did he get that from?"

Before his release, Mr Abdel Ghani called the channel, saying he was speaking from the chief prosecutor's office in Cairo.

He denied the charge of "propagating false news".

Right.

See also that three other journalists (all of them well-known activists) were also arrested in this CPJ statement.