Canadian group honors ICFJ-trained journalist for his brave work on Egypt revolution

Canadian group honors ICFJ-trained journalist for his brave work on Egypt revolution
Oct172011  by H.J. Cummins
@icfj  @canadaCJFE  @mfatta7

Mohamed Abdelfattah, trained in video journalism by the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ), has been honored far from his native Egypt for work credited with helping spark the January 25 Revolution that toppled President Hosni Mubarak.

Citing his "passion for free expression and extraordinary courage," the Canadian Journalists for Free Expression (CJFE) awarded Abdelfattah its 2011 International Press Freedom Award.
The group specifically cited Abdelfattah’s report exposing the torture and death of a young Egyptian in an Alexandria police station last summer. Using eye-witness accounts, he discredited Egyptian police claims that Khaled Said died of a drug overdose. The video went viral, and "We are all Khaled Said" became a rallying cry for the early protests.
"It helped transform a lot of people into paying attention to what was actually happening at the hands of the Mubarak police," Abdelfattah told ICFJ in an interview. "That’s something I was really proud of."
Abdelfattah credits ICFJ with his start. Because he saw journalism as a force for social and political change, he enrolled in an ICFJ course, On the Margins No More, run last year in Egypt to train citizen journalists there.
"The program was very important to me," he said. "It moved me from amateur blogging on the Internet just about anything to meticulously writing a news story or producing a news piece, whether in text or in video." In fact, those skills enabled Abdelfattah to expose two cases of police brutality leading up to the revolution. Again last November a young man, Ahmed Shaaban, went missing, and this time Alexandria police claimed suicide. And again using eye-witness accounts, Abdelfattah found evidence of torture.
"I was very happy on January 25 in Alexandria when massive demonstrations broke out, and I saw many people carry a big banner with a photograph of Said and Shaaban and next to them two other guys who were torture victims," he said.
Abdelfattah is now a freelance video journalist in Egypt. He will travel to Toronto this November to receive his award from CJFE, which champions the free expression rights of journalists in Canada and worldwide.