High-Profile Journalist Arrested in The Philippines.
GORANI: A journalist in the Philippines who has been an outspoken critic of Rodrigo Duterte's war on drugs has been arrested. Maria Ressa has been charged for cyber libel she wrote in 2012. Ressa is CEO of the news website "Rappler" and a former colleague, she was CNN's Manila bureau chief. You might remember she was named "Time Magazine's" 2018 person of the year as part of a group of global journalists fighting to report fairly. Our group also included Jamal Khashoggi. Her lawyer joins me now over the phone from the Philippines. J.J., have you been able to speak to Maria since her arrest?</s>J.J.  DISINI, LAWYER FOR RESSA (via telephone): Yes, we were at the national bureau of investigation where she is detained, and I had an opportunity to speak to her.</s>GORANI: How long will they hold her?</s>DISINI: So, we're waiting for the courts to open in a couple of hours and we will file an application for bail. And if all goes well, we're hoping to have her release within the day.</s>HALA GORANI, CNN INTERNATIONAL HOST: But why did they deny bail initially?</s>DISINI: So there would have been an opportunity for us to post bail earlier. Unfortunately, the arresting officers came after office hours, which made it difficult for us. And when we attempted to post bail at a night court, the judge had informed us, verbally, that he had no jurisdiction to do so. So I think it was just a circumstances conspired to prevent her to get her liberty tonight. She has to spend overnight.</s>GORANI: J.J., do you believe these charges are politically motivated?</s>DISINI: It seems to be the case. So it seems to be a lot of established jurisprudence that the Department of Justice seems to ignore in order to make this fit. So normally, or as provided in the revised the penal code. Libel is supposed to -- you are not allowed to file a case for libel, more than one year the date of publication. This was a -- this is a publication or republication, as they indicated, this 2014, although the article first went online in 2012, even before the cybercrime statute came into effect.</s>GORANI: So because among freedom of expression activists and the committee to protect journalists, the feeling here is that the government is attacking Maria Ressa because she works as a journalist she's published accounts and stories that have been critical or embarrassing to the government. Do you share that view?</s>DISINI: I think there's some reason to believe that there's some political motivation for the case. It seems that when sort of doctrines are being bent in order to accommodate a prosecution. There's some reason to believe that that is the case. In fact, the National Bureau of Investigations that initially investigated did not believe that there was a case here, but when they submitted their recommendation to the Department of Justice, they recommended the case not be filed because of established jurisprudence. But the Department of Justice reversed that and filed the case. And in fact, we should have an opportunity to file a motion for reconsideration. But instead the DOJ went straight to court. We had just received the order yesterday. And apparently, the case was filed in court as early as a week ago. So we were denied the opportunity to have this reviewed before it was filed in court. So, as you said - as you said, the circumstances conspired against you, the fact that this happened after office hours, the fact that you weren't able to review the charges ahead of time. Let me ask you, though, about Maria herself. How is she holding up? Because she's being detained right now. She was quoted as saying in her 20-plus career -- and she is an extremely well respected journalist over many decades. She has never been detained. This is the first time. How is she doing?</s>DISINI: She's in high spirits, but -- and she's, of course, unhappy about her circumstances. But she's in high spirits. She's in fighting mode and she wants to push forward and bring the arguments to the court and attempt -- what the first thing we're going to do is try to get those charges dismissed.</s>GORANI: And she could have predicted this, she was broad, she was named one of the Time's People of the Year. She's accepted awards for her fearless reporting. Why did she choose to go back?</s>DISINI: So this is not the only case that she's facing. In fact, this is the sixth time that -- this is the sixth criminal case that she's facing. So she's there's been a multiple cases of tax evasion along them, right, that have been filed against her and against Rappler. And that's why, I think, there's reason to believe that there's a sort of conspiracy, right, to silence or to quash the voice here of Rappler and of Maria Ressa.</s>GORANI: J.J. Disini, the lawyer for Rappler speaking to us about the detention of journalist Maria Ressa in the Philippines. Thanks very much. Well, moving on from the Philippines to another part of the world. He was swept into office by a military coup and now he appears ready to cement his grip on power. For years and years and years to come. Abdel Fattah el-Sisi could remain Egypt's the president until 2034. If parliament votes to amend the constitution to extend presidential terms. Lawmakers are also now debating granting Sisi even more sweeping powers. We're joined by Steven Cook, a senior fellow from Middle Eastern Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. He's also the author of "False Dawn: Protest Democracy, and Violence in the New Middle East." Are you surprised that parliament could allow Sisi to stay in power for another -- I guess, up until 2034, if this goes through?</s>STEVEN COOK, SENIOR FELLOW, MIDDLE EASTERN STUDIES AT THE COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS: Well, Hala, this is the least surprising thing to happen in the Middle East in the last decades. I think from the very beginning when Abdel Fattah el-Sisi came to power in July 2013, the Egyptian elite have been trying to reset the natural order of things. And by changing the constitution to allow him to run again, changing the tenure of the president to six-year terms for at least another two terms that would, by the end of the current term, he's in leave him in power for 20 years. I'll remind you and your viewers that President Mubarak was in power to shy of 30 years. So this is really an effort to return things to the status quo ante.</s>GORANI: And it's been eight years since the Arab Spring when everything seemed possible, a new dawn, you wrote the book on it literally. A new dawn in the Arab world and Egypt, in particular. Is Egypt worse off now than it was in 2010?</s>COOK: Well, I think undoubtedly Egypt is a more repressive country than ever before. I think that President Sisi and his advisors believe that Egypt has a series of problems that really can be resolved through the application of force on the population. In contrast, President Mubarak saw things -- he certainly used force, but he used a lighter touch at times. He saw things to be -- that could be managed rather than through, as I said, force and violence.</s>GORANI: Yes. It certainly felt less repressive. It was easier to work there as a journalist. There's no doubt about that. But, you know, the reality is a lot of Egyptians are pretty comfortable with Sisi in power, especially those who are very, very fearful of the Muslim brotherhood. And I'm talking there not just about minorities like the Coptic minority and others, but just kind of ordinary middleclass Egyptians. There are those who are happy to have Sisi in power as opposed to Mohamed Morsi whom he overthrew.</s>COOK: I think that that's right. And you do have large numbers of people who are quite fearful of the Muslim brotherhood. It was extraordinary how many people actually came out into the streets in July 2013, in support of the military. That's because there really was this crucial issue at the heart of the post-Mubarak period about the future direction, the identity of Egypt. Then you heard from a lot of people, not just elites or supporters of the military, that one of the reasons why they so opposed Mohamed Morsi was because he was undermining what they saw as the heart and soul of Egypt, what Egypt stood for. In favor of a more religious type of polity. Now, Egyptians are quite conservatives at large, but it seems to suggest they did not want to live in a Muslim brotherhood defined political system.</s>GORANI: But I wonder if the next revolution is inevitable and perhaps not so far away. I mean, this is a country that is demographically exploding. Poverty is increasing. There's an insurgency in the Sinai. The repression is also increasing. I mean, this is not -- this does not guarantee any stability, to say the least, going forward for Egypt.</s>COOK: I think it's clear that Egypt is unstable. It's virtually ungovernable. The question of whether there will be a revolution, though, is really anyone's guess. Certainly, there are signs, as you quite well point out, of instability. But whether that turns into another mass uprising against the political system, I think, remains a question that no one can really answer. Just think about Tunisia eight years ago. Did anybody think that the suicide of a young man in a south central town would cause a revolution that would overthrow a terrible dictatorship in Tunisia and then it would spread to Egypt and other parts of the region? No one knows, and no one could possibly predict.</s>GORANI: You're right. You're right. Predicting anything, whether it's the U.S. politics or Middle Eastern politics is a dangerous game. And certainly no one predicted that this revolutionary fervor would spread, and certainly in 2011 all the way to countries like Syria where Syrians themselves, I remember at the time would say, there will be no uprising against Assad, people are too afraid. And we all - we all knew, unfortunately, how that ended up for people there. Steven Cook, it's always a pleasure. Thanks you so much for joining us.</s>COOK: Thank you, Hala.</s>GORANI: Thanks. Now to a little boy in Afghanistan who's become a Taliban target, unfortunately. You may remember the 7-year-old who became an internet sensation, thanks to a picture of him wearing a homemade Lionel Messi jersey. Nick Paton Walsh explains why his family is now begging the football star to rescue them from Afghanistan.</s>NICK PATON WALSH, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Fame has a totally different price in Afghanistan. Meet Murtaza age 7. His bid to emulate his football idol Lionel Messi with a plastic bag is a football shirt and handwritten number 10 went viral over two years ago. He got this signed shirt and even met the Argentinian star in Qatar. But this is a story of unintended consequences and how celebrity in Afghanistan doesn't mean paparazzi or footballers' wives but threats and fleeing your home in the night. Soon after Murtaza's fame, the Taliban attacked their village. "The Taliban were killing our relatives," he says, "and they were searching houses. They stole cars and killed their passengers searching houses and killing people. I told my mother to take me somewhere else. We weren't allowed to play football by the Taliban or even go out of the house. We used to hear the sound of heavy machine guns and Kalashnikovs and rockets at home. We also heard people screaming. Then my mother decided to bring me here." His father took them to a nearby city but had to stay behind to fight. "The last time I saw my father," he says, "was on the first day we came here and then he went back and I haven't seen him since then. I miss him so much. When he calls my mother, I also talk to him." Even here, they live behind closed doors, says his mother, Shafika (ph). "It would have been better if Murtaza hadn't gained fame," she said. "He spends all of his time here inside the house. Not only the Taliban but some other groups have started thinking that Messi might have given him a lot of money. We stopped sending him to school, because we were being threatened all the time." She appeals again to Messi to help them leave Afghanistan, but their story is just one in the spotlight, where there are millions of displaced here in the growing darkness. Murtaza hails from the Hazara minority, often persecuted by the Taliban and fearful of their ascendance in any peace deal with the Americans. "In Kabul, I cannot go outside the house," he says. "My mother doesn't let me go out. She's afraid. I only play with my friends inside. When I was in my hometown, I couldn't wear my Messi jersey, because I was afraid somebody would hurt me. I want to be taken from this country, because there's fighting here. I want to become a football player like Messi and play with Messi." Caught now, like much of the country, in the gap between how much foreigners are willing to do to help and what Afghans need. Nick Paton Walsh, CNN, London.</s>GORANI: Still to come tonight, an elusive predator has been captured on camera, that is. A rare black leopard has been photographed in Africa for the first time in a century. We'll bring you the pictures, next.