On Wednesday, fact-checking outlet Matsda2sh began publishing information on the identities of five of six Egyptian nationals arrested in Zambia, alongside four other nationals, onboard a now-impounded private jet carrying cash, counterfeit gold and weapons.

The men, the outlet stated, were a mix of private defense contractors, former and current Egyptian security officials and gold merchants.

In the early hours of Saturday morning, Karim Asaad, a journalist with the outlet, was arrested from his home by security personnel, according to his wife, who spoke to Mada Masr.

Asaad’s whereabouts remain unknown.

In addition to Asaad’s arrest, the rest of the Matsda2sh team in Egypt have been pursued by security officials since Friday evening due to their coverage of the confiscated Zambia plane, a member of the Matsda2sh editorial team told Mada Masr.

In a statement published early Saturday morning, Matsda2sh said that its team of journalists had been subjected to a security raid and that the platform’s accounts had been subject to a security breach. The outlet stated that it holds Egyptian security authorities responsible for the safety of its staff.

Matsda2sh has been reporting on the high-profile case of the private jet, which departed from Cairo International Airport on Sunday, since it was confiscated later the same evening in Zambia with six Egyptian nationals on board, in addition to four others from Latvia, the Netherlands, Zambia and Spain.

Zambian authorities announced that nearly US$5.7 million, five pistols, seven magazines and over a hundred rounds of ammunition, as well as 602 pieces of suspected gold and gold measuring equipment, were seized. A Zambian minister said on Tuesday that the suspected gold was in fact a variety of less precious metals coated in gold.

On Friday, Matsda2sh published information about the identities of five of the six arrested Egyptians, but the platform later deleted the information related to one of the five.

Asaad’s arrest came in the early hours of Saturday morning, according to his wife, who told Mada Masr that a security force comprising 10 armed personnel — some of whom were dressed in olive-green fatigues while others were wearing civilian clothes — knocked on the door of the Asaad home at around 1:30 am on Saturday morning. Asaad and his wife, who was sleeping next to the couple’s child, immediately ran to the door.

From the moment they entered the house, the security personnel insulted the couple and demanded that they collect all the dollars in the house. According to Asaad’s wife, one security official told Asaad, “You don’t know how dangerous what you published is.”

When Asaad’s wife went to get their child, security forces followed her.

“They pushed me inside the room, shut the door, locked it, and assaulted me, slapping me and insulting me in front of my child and threatening me that I won’t see him again unless I tell them what my husband does and unless I bring them the things that we are hiding,” Asaad’s wife said.

“I told them that my husband is a journalist,” Asaad’s wife continued, adding that there are no dollars in the house.

The security personnel then searched the house, confiscating LE8000, jewelry, mobile phones, a laptop and a PC.

From her room, Asaad’s wife could hear her husband being threatened and beaten, with security personnel demanding he give them access to his personal electronic devices.

Once they had secured access to his devices, security personnel deleted two posts on Matsda2sh’s Facebook account, which detailed the identities of two of the six Egyptians detained in Zambia, one of whom was allegedly a former military officer and the other allegedly a former police officer.

After 30 minutes, security personnel took Asaad and left the flat.

Since Wednesday, a number of government-aligned Youtuber commentators with audiences in the tens of thousands have been publishing criticisms of Matsda2sh and fellow fact-checking platforms, Sahih Masr and Al-Mawkef al-Masry, as well as other websites the Youtubers described as “affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood.”

Ahmed Mubarak, one commentator, said Matsda2sh and a number of other pages and platforms are acting as Muslim Brotherhood mouthpieces by publishing information not available to anyone except security forces. The pages, claimed Mubarak, are run from Istanbul by a former Muslim Brotherhood member on the run, whom he named as Mohamed al-Sheikh. Mubarak described the anonymous pages as publishing false information with malicious intent or in the service of agencies from hostile foreign countries seeking to blacken the name of Egypt’s government.

Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights Director Hossam Bahgat called for Asaad’s immediate release, the disclosure of his place of detention, and allowing EIPR lawyers, who are representing Asaad and his family, to attend any investigations he is being subject to.

Bahgat told Mada Masr that Asaad committed only one crime, which is journalism, noting that he is an Egyptian journalist who graduated from the Faculty of Mass Communication and has been practicing the profession from inside Egypt for ten years.

Asaad is one of Matsda2sh’s founders, a graduate of Al-Azhar’s Media Faculty who worked at a number of outlets and websites and attended an Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism (ARIJ) conference in Jordan on behalf of Matsda2sh last year.

According to a member of the Matsda2sh team who spoke to Mada Masr on condition of anonymity, the outlet was founded in 2018 by a group of Egyptian journalists and researchers with the intention of countering what they perceived to be a deluge of false and misleading news coverage and of correcting commentary put out by politicians, pundits and public figures, as well as of producing open source investigations and reports.