CAIRO - A week since she was detained in the Sudan, where she was covering the protests, what exactly has happened to Egyptian journalist Shaimaa Adel is still unclear. Her family and friends have tried their best to find out, but to no avail. "Last Tuesday, I learnt from the TV that my daughter had been detained. I phoned her Editor-in-Chief who told me that he had called the Egyptian Ambassador in Khartoum, who assured him that Shaimaa would be freed within a few hours," says Hajja Ibtisam, Shaimaa's mother, wearing a waist- length khimar (yashmak). This news calmed her down, as did an article that she read in the Arabic-language independent daily Al-Watan, for which Shaimaa works, which said that she would arrive home last Thursday at 9:30pm. "But my daughter didn't come home, so I phoned our Consul and Ambassador there, who told me that security was about to release her, advising me not to speak to the media for her safety. “The Ambassador promised me that she would come home very soon," Hajja Ibtisam told the Egyptian Mail at an interview, during a protest staged at the Press Syndicate on Sunday, demanding she be freed. But still Shaimaa didn't return, so her disappointed mother called them again and was surprised when they told her that they hadn't met Shaimaa, as she'd been arrested by Sudanese Intelligence. "I will not wait a second longer. I want my daughter back. God only knows how I feel," said her tearful mother. "The Ministry of Foreign Affairs must take urgent action. Shaimaa doesn't deserve to be ignored like this by the Government," she added bitterly. Shaimaa, 25, was arrested in an internet café, after interviewing some Sudanese activists and members of the opposition. Shaimaa, who covered the Egyptian and Libyan revolutions and last month went to Syria where she covered the massacres and sustained a leg injury, is the second Egyptian journalist to have been arrested in Sudan. But the first one, also a woman, was released on the same day that she was arrested. "The Egyptian Embassy in Khartoum said that her release might take some time, as Shaimaa interviewed opposition figures and intelligence claims that this amounts to interference in Sudan' internal affairs," Mohamed Abdel- Qoddous, the head of the Freedom Committee in Egypt's Press Syndicate, told this newspaper. "We demand that President Morsi intervene to resolve this issue," he said, adding that the Syndicate has issued a statement condemning Shaimaa's arrest.
