Cairo: A prominent Egyptian satirist has been fined millions of dollars over a dispute with a television channel which suspended his show after it lampooned military leaders, officials said Tuesday.
Bassem Yousuf, often compared to US satirist Jon Stewart, moved Al Bernamej (The Programme) to Saudi-owned channel MBC last year after it was pulled by the private Egyptian broadcaster CBC.
The Cairo Regional Centre for International Commercial Arbitration fined Yousuf and his company, Q-Soft, 50 million Egyptian pounds ($6.5 million,Dh23.85 million ) each for “CBC’s financial and literary losses,” CBC owner Mohammad Al Ameen said.
The arbitration body said the weekly show was not “purposeful and constructive” but a platform for “smearing the country’s political direction”.
It said that if Yousuf’s company failed to pay its part of the fine then he would have to shoulder it all himself.
CBC suspended Al Bernamej in November 2013 after an episode in which the satirist poked fun at military leaders, including then army chief and now President Abdul Fattah Al Sissi.
The private channel said at the time that Yousuf had “violated the editorial policies” of the channel.
Yousuf terminated his contract with the channel after it refused to resume broadcasts of the show, a source close to Al Bernamej said.
In February 2014, he began airing the show on Dubai-based MBC but suspended it in June because of what he described as “enormous” pressure.
The doctor-turned-satirist plans to appeal the arbitration body’s ruling, the Al Bernamej source said.
“I have been forced into a commercial arbitration conflict, that I am not part of, regarding CBC’s suspension of the show,” Yousuf wrote on Twitter.
The show’s suspension triggered concerns about media freedoms in Egypt amid a brutal crackdown overseen by Al Sissi on supporters of Islamist president Mohammad Mursi, whom he ousted in July last year.
Yousuf became a household name known for witty remarks lampooning public figures including Mursi, the country’s first freely elected president.
