An April 2, 2013 report stated that the Egyptian government had threatened to revoke CBC’s broadcast license, and that a body acting on its behalf had sent the channel a warning stating that its license would be revoked unless Youssef’s show stops violating the workplace regulations of the media free zone out of which the channel operates, and stops using sexual innuendo and insulting statements.[4]
The U.S. State Department’s April 1, 2013 criticism of Youssef’s arrest angered the Egyptian presidency and the Muslim Brotherhood (MB). The president’s spokesman stressed that the Egyptian general prosecutor’s office has the right to prosecute any Egyptian citizen, while the MB issued a strongly worded communiqué calling the State Department’s criticism “blatant interference” in Egypt’s domestic affairs and adding that the Egyptian public considered it an indication that the U.S. was protecting the denigration of religious ritual by the Egyptian media, and that this could spark anti-U.S. sentiment among the Egyptians.
The following day, April 2, tensions further escalated with the outbreak of a Twitter war. A tweet by the U.S. Embassy in Cairo included a link to a segment from the April 1, 2013 edition of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, in which Stewart, using MEMRI TV clips and other material, criticized Mursi for Youssef’s arrest; the Egyptian president’s office and the MB responded with angry tweets of their own.
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Full report: http://www.memri.org/report/en/0/0/0/0/0/0/7112.htm