The board of the Foreign Press Association in Egypt sent the following email titled “The Foreign Press Association in Egypt is independent and will remain independent” to all its members:

The articles published in Al-Usbua on March 15 and Sawt Al-Umma on March 22 included false claims made by Mr. Ismail De Coursac. Publishing these false claims and serious accusations directed to the FPA is not acceptable, the General Assembly of the FPA voted unanimously in favor of stripping Mr. De Coursac of his membership without a single vote in support of him.


Editor AWR: For the article in Al-Usbua and Sawt al-Umma see AWR, 2004, week 12, art. 3 and 4. Al-Usbua placed a response by FPA board member Hassan al-Hawary (week 12, art. 39) but added its own questions making Hulsman write a response. This text was approved by the FPA board, but al-Usbua did not want to place a second response. This article dated April 15 is found in AWR, week 12, art. 40. Sawt Al-Umma was contacted by chairman Volkhard Windfuhr but did not bother about placing a response to the false allegations made by De Coursac. De Coursac, meanwhile started a letter campaign against the board to members of the FPA which resulted in an extraordinary general assembly on April 13 where members were asked to discuss the allegations made by De Coursac. In the vote that followed the assembled members unanimously decided, for the first time in the history of the Foreign Press Association, to strip De Coursac of his membership of the FPA.


The experience with De Coursac shows that journalists and editor-in-chiefs at Al-Usbua and Sawt al-Umma but also elsewhere believed De Coursac to be credible because 1) he was anti-American and 2) he had converted to Islam. None of them found it necessary to check the claims De Coursac had made.