Lina Attalah
Chief Editor
Lina studied journalism at the American University in Cairo. Before joining Al-Masry Al-Youm English Edition, she wrote for Reuters, Cairo Times, the Daily Star, and the Christian Science Monitor, among others. In 2005, she worked as radio producer and campaign coordinator with the BBC World Service Trust in Darfur, Sudan. She also worked as project manager for a number of research-based projects with multi-media outputs around the themes of space, mobility, and intellectual history. Lina is particularly drawn to border areas, where human geography issues of conflict and desire are rampant.
Contributions
News
Front-page headlines reflecting fears and confusions about the electoral process have become a common in recent papers, just two weeks ahead of the parliamentary elections scheduled to start on 28 November.
“Chaos threatens a civil war before...
Israel is still holding activists and journalists on board the Freedom Waves boats to Gaza, which were intercepted and caught on Friday afternoon in international waters.
According to Huwaida Arraf, a Palestinian lawyer providing the detainees with...
Lina Attalah, Al-Masry Al-Youm English's managing editor, recently took part in the "Freedom Waves" flotilla carrying aid to Gaza. She was captured at sea by Israeli security forces on Friday along with the rest of the passengers...
INTERNATIONAL WATERS, Eastern Mediterranean — At less than 150 nautical miles from the Gaza Strip's shores, activists on board the Tahrir solidarity boat are expecting potential Israeli intervention at any point, though there has been no...
INTERNATIONAL WATERS, Eastern Mediterranean - The 12 passengers aboard the Tahrir, a Canadian boat attempting to bring medical aid and a message of solidarity to the besieged Gaza Strip along with another ship, are frantically preparing for their...
FETHIYE, Turkey - "It doesn't matter what we do for Gaza this month or this year. What matters is how many years we stay with Gaza,” said David Heap, a member of the steering committee of “Tahrir,” a Canadian ship...
FETHIYE, Turkey - Two boats set sail from the Turkish port of Fethiye on 2 November, bound for the Gaza Strip in another activist attempt to break the Israeli siege on the Palestinian territory.
The two boats, one Irish and one Canadian, were...
A long night of reporting about the Maspero violence that claimed 28 lives on 9 October ended with a heavy feeling of loss. A quick glimpse through one's Twitter feed revealed shock, sorrow and defeat. But amid this ominous moment, Alaa Abd El...
Families of those killed in the Maspiro clashes on Sunday night congregated at the Coptic Hospital on Monday morning, as their loved ones were about to be buried.
At the entrance, dozens of women in black screamed and wept, while men were seen...
Reports of trouble in Sinai remain on the front pages of privately-owned papers, and only state-run Al-Ahram leads with other news, ranging from Egypt's support for Libya's revolutionaries to the adjourned prosecution of former Housing...
Opinion articles
I don’t expect the state to be creative, because power is an end in many ways, and only a threat to power is conducive to the state going outside of its comfort zone.
I don’t expect the state to be creative, because creativity is put...
I spent days grappling with the difficulty of identifying ways of remembering 25 January — and we’re only down to the second anniversary. Every possible story seems to have been told and retold. Barracks have been cast on both...
During the painful Ettehadiya battle earlier this month between Brotherhood supporters and youthful opposition, the violence was not just physical. The scene was also a battlefield of chants. We chanted, “horriya” (freedom). They...
Bashing the Egyptian state for its utter failure in Sinai is no longer news. But some microcosmic incidents still illustrate the state’s impotence in dealing with the tumultuous border area.
Indeed, Sinai can serve as a laboratory in which one...
Amid Egypt's troubled transition, news from Sinai is emerging again, albeit in its old familiar form. Lawlessness is the story of the arid peninsula, which is home to an intricate set of historic, political, social and economic conditions that...
I was recently sipping a cup of tea in Café Riche, Downtown Cairo’s 100-year-old café. I sat next to one of its windows, fenced with interlocking iron wires to close it off from the hurling sounds of the busy heart of town. As I was gazing at the...
