Cairo: Egyptian President Mohammad Mursi has sued two media outlets for carrying false news about him and slandering him, his spokesman said.
“Practices of some media outlets have exceeded limits of the law and it was necessary to stand up to them,” Yasser Ali, the presidential spokesman, was quoted Wednesday in the local media.
Ali declined to name the two outlets, and said the presidency has also taken legal action against a foreign news agency for carrying a “fake” interview with Mursi. The agency is believed to be Iran’s Fars.
The lawsuits are the first to be filed by the Islamist president since he took office on June 30. Early this month, Mursi, Egypt’s first elected civilian president, lashed out at his critics, warning them against testing his patience.
Meanwhile, Mursi’s Muslim Brotherhood has lodged a complaint with the country’s chief prosecutor against the information minister, the head of the news sector at official television and three journalists in the government-run newspaper Rose Al Youssef, accusing them, of publishing false news about the group.
The Brotherhood’s lawyer Abdul Moneim Abdul Maqsud said the five “maliciously” reported last month that the group’s supreme guide wished that Ismail Haniya, the head of the Hamas government in Gaza, would be Egypt’s prime minister too.
Hamas is an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood. Haniya visited Egypt and met with Mursi in Cairo last week.
The lawyer requested that the five should be referred to a criminal court.
Critics of the formerly banned group, have increasingly accused it of seeking to dominate the media, mainly the state-owned publications.
