A criminal court in Cairo has postponed the retrial of the prominent Egyptian journalist Lina Attalah, whose case has drawn international condemnation.

Wednesday’s opening hearing was adjourned until 18 November after defence lawyers representing the editor-in-chief of the news outlet Mada Masr requested a new judge.

The UN has warned of “widening assaults on press freedom by Egyptian authorities, including the targeting, persecution and harassment of independent journalists”.

Attalah told the BBC that a recent crackdown was meant to “send a chilling message” to “the very few newsrooms that are left”.

She warned: “Everybody should be careful, everybody should be scared, everybody should be wondering if they are next.”

Set up 13 years ago, Mada Masr became Egypt’s leading independent news site with Attalah as its editor-in-chief and co-founder.

Last month, the New Cairo Misdemeanours Court convicted her of running a website without a licence – which she said she had tried in vain for years to obtain. She was issued a hefty fine of 3 million Egyptian pounds ($56,000; £42,000) and Mada Masr was ordered to shut down.

After that trial, Attalah found that a court had previously given her a one-year prison sentence, without her knowledge, for “spreading false news” – a charge often used against journalists and dissidents – as well as operating a website without a licence. It was issued in absentia in 2024, even though she was in the country at the time. Attalah is now being retried in that case by the same judge.

At the opening session, Attalah’s defence team requested the judge’s recusal, arguing that he had “already formed a conviction in mind against the defendant”, Mada Masr cited its lawyer Hassan al-Azhar as saying, external. The judge went into recess before adjourning proceedings for a week to allow the court to consider the defence’s request, he added.

Mada Masr also said Attalah’s appeal against last month’s conviction was scheduled to take place on 25 November.

Egypt has largely stifled freedom of the press, ranking 169th out of 180 countries for press freedom, according to Reporters Without Borders’ 2026 analysis. The group says that at least 26 journalists who were arrested in recent years remain in detention.

While most newspapers and television stations now keep to government lines, Mada Masr remained a rare, independent and investigative news source in Egypt. However, since 2017 the site could only be viewed from outside the country.

It had reported on alleged corruption and human rights abuses, and provided deep coverage of politics and economics, as well as regional upheaval and wars in Libya, Sudan and Gaza.

In her BBC interview on Sunday, Attalah insisted that the factual reporting and professional standards of Mada Masr had an important role to play in Egyptian society, which could benefit the government.

“It’s much better if you have a little space left to have it open for professional media organisations who do rigorous reporting, because if we disappear, then you make the space for conspiracies and disinformation,” she said.

“People need to know, people need to consume information and you’re shooting yourself in the foot if you’re killing the newsrooms that do it properly.”

In September, six journalists with the independent fact-checking platform, Matsda2sh – constituting its entire newsroom – were arrested in home raids by the Egyptian authorities and held incommunicado for nearly a week.