Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, whether he has made representations to his Egyptian counterpart on the imprisonment of (a) Ahmed Gamal Ziada, (b) Mahmoud Hussein (c) Ismail Alexandrani, (d) Hisham Gaafar and (e) other journalists in that country.

We are aware of recent reports of the imprisonment of these individuals and of other journalists in Egypt. We are very concerned about restrictions on media freedom in Egypt. Our Ambassador in Cairo has therefore raised several of these cases and our wider concerns with the Egyptian Assistant Minister for Human Rights on 21 February.