Mohamed Fahmy
Award-Winning Journalist & Human Rights Advocate Imprisoned in Egypt for 438 Days | Bestselling Author, The Marriott Cell | Founder, Fahmy Foundation
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Mohamed Fahmy is an award-winning Egyptian-Canadian war reporter, journalist, author and human rights activist. He spent most of his career covering conflict zones and some of the most definitive global events that shape our world today. During his multi-decade career, he has reported for the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, Dubai TV, Al Jazeera and CNN. In addition, he spent one year working for the International Committee of the Red Cross, protecting refugees, political prisoners, and the missing.
His most recent post as the Egypt Bureau Chief of Al Jazeera International captured world attention when he was unjustly arrested in December 2013. He was incarcerated for over 400 days —including a month in solitary—alongside ISIS terrorists and some of the most hardened Jihadists in the Middle East in Egypt’s maximum-security prisons.
The Egyptian government charged Fahmy with conspiring with the Muslim Brotherhood, a militant group considered a terrorist group in many countries. He was wrongly charged with fabricating news to serve the fundamentalist group’s agenda. At the time, Egypt faced an international outcry from groups ranging from human rights and press freedom organizations to the United Nations, the European Union and President Barack Obama.
In September 2015, Fahmy was pardoned by the Egyptian Government.
He returned home to Canada in October of 2015, and was the first professor in the history of the university to sign a contract with The University of British Columbia while still in prison as an adjunct professor. He lectured thousands of students about his legal battle for freedom and his experience as a war journalist who witnessed on the ground some of the most intense wars in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Lebanon and other places.
In 2016, Mohamed released ‘The Marriott Cell,” book which became a bestseller in Canada. Following this release, Oscar-nominated award-winning director, David Paperny produced the riveting docu-drama, “Mohamed Fahmy – Half Free,” which ran on CBC and is now available on Amazon. This special production followed Fahmy and his wife and documented his life in Vancouver as a free man trying to live a normal life while fighting for the freedom of other journalists through his foundation after being unjustly captured in prison.
During his tenure teaching at UBC, Fahmy wrote a regular column at the Toronto Star where he shared his global experience with a wider audience.
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