Mohammed Elshamy

Mohammed Elshamy was just leaving a prison visit with one brother when he heard another one had been arrested this weekend.

“My first thought was to figure out what had happened quickly, and to get him out,” he said. “We unfortunately know what to do in these situations.”

Perhaps no one in Egypt has witnessed firsthand the sweeping crackdown on the press as much as the Elshamy brothers. Three of the four brothers in their family work as journalists. The eldest, Abdullah Elshamy, has been in prison without being charged for 160 days. He was arrested alongside several other members of the Al Jazeera team on Aug. 14, as they reported on the violent police dispersed of the Muslim Brotherhood protest camp in Rabaa Square, Cairo. The next, Mohamed Elshamy, who works as a photographer for the Anadolu photo agency, was arrested over the weekend as he left his offices near the U.S. Embassy in Cairo. He was held for six hours before he was released. And Mosa’ab Elshamy, the youngest of the three journalist brothers, spent several weeks in jail when he was arrested while covering protests in 2011.

“I’ve been working as a photographer in Egypt for three years and I think it’s never been as bad as it is nowadays,” Mosa’ab told BuzzFeed. “It’s never been great, but now it is an absolute nightmare to be a journalist and try to over anything. Just holding a camera is enough to get you arrested.”

Over the weekend, 12 journalists were detained by police in Egypt while trying to cover the three-year anniversary of the Egyptian revolution that ousted Hosni Mubarak’s decades-long regime. Two more have been detained since, while Egypt’s state prosecutor announced Wednesday he was bringing charges against 20 journalists from the Al Jazeera TV network — including four foreigners

None of the governments who have come to power in Egypt since the 2011 uprising have delivered on their promises to respect freedom of the press,” said Sherif Mansour from the Committee for the Protection of Journalists. “It is difficult to see how the country could achieve anything like democracy when it is one of the most dangerous places on earth for journalists to do their jobs.”

Journalists in Egypt have repeatedly expressed their concerns to Egyptian officials, and recently collected signatures from many of the world’s largest news agencies to petition the ongoing detention of journalists. In closed forums, many discuss concerns over continuing to operate in Egypt.