Covert Death Threat Targets Journalist Najiba Jalal as Lawyer Faces Widespread Condemnation
A Facebook post written by a lawyer in Souk Arba’a has sparked widespread outrage after it included phrases that journalist Najiba Jalal interpreted as a direct death threat and incitement to violence.
The post, published on a page called Nostalgia, managed by a lawyer from Souk Arba’a, was overtly aggressive and contemptuous towards Najiba Jalal, editor-in-chief of "Express TV," due to her professional activities in exposing corruption, as stated in her official response.
The lawyer used derogatory language to describe the journalist and ended the post with the phrase, “Professor Azrael knows what he’s doing,” a statement that provoked intense anger and was perceived by Jalal as a veiled and explicit death threat.
In her first response, Najiba Jalal posted a warning about the seriousness of the message, emphasizing that it was not just a matter of mockery but what she termed “media and announcement” of murder, calling for the intervention of the public prosecutor and the bar association to which the concerned party belongs.
The journalist clarified that the post also demeaned her dignity through degrading comparisons, which she suggested were a psychological preparation and implicit incitement to harm her, adding that she rejects “normalization with this kind of dangerous symbolic violence.”
Jalal affirmed her full right to resort to legal proceedings against the individual and held the relevant institutions responsible for protecting journalists from verbal and symbolic violence, especially when such threats stem from someone practicing a profession inherently linked to law and justice.
The incident raises serious questions about the responsibilities of professional institutions in regulating the discourse of their members and the limits of freedom of expression when it escalates into incitement, in a context where the digital space is experiencing a rise in violent and abusive rhetoric, particularly directed at female journalists and human rights activists.
