to have close relations with the US encourage campaigns against it?

The answer would begin to emerge months later when 42 employees of US NGOs found themselves on trial in Egypt. I was among them. This is how I found myself there.

My journey to the cage

In June 2011, I received a call from a former professor of journalism at the American University in Cairo. She was, at the time, the country director for the Washington DC-based NGO, the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ). She had recommended me for the position of director and adviser for a new training programme that the ICFJ intended to launch for Egyptian journalists, she explained. I thanked her and promised that I would consider the offer once it was received.

Later that month, the professorintroduced me to the head of the planning section at the ICFJ, who was visiting Egypt to oversee an already existing training programme. We agreed that the future training programme should focus on improving the journalistic skills and professional ethics of Egyptian journalists. We also discussed my potential employment and she made one condition: I would either have to resign from Al-Ahram newspaper, where I worked, or take a sabbatical. I refused.

Then, in July, Patrick Butler, the vice president of the ICFJ, visited Egypt to work on the regional programme that had been started by the professor from the American University in Cairo. The programme – ICFJ’s largest in the Middle East – included journalists from various Arab countries and was being held in partnership with Al-Ahram Canadian