A small group of us protested for Kareem’s cause in front of the Egyptian embassy.

Some of the posters that we made:

Mohammed, president of Bahrain Youth Society for Human Rights.

Mohammed again, along with Marwa, one of the editors at ME Faith:

The Mideast Youth team has created a banner for Kareem. It would be great if you can all include it on your blogs as well to help spread awareness on Kareem’s case.

Please don’t forget him, things keep getting harder and we’d like to show him our continuous support:

After referring his case to “injustice” State Security Prosecution, Kareem Amer is sentenced to additional 45 days in custody

Cairo – 19 December 2006,

The Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (HRinfo) condemns Higher State Security Prosecution (HSSP) decision to hold in custody the Egyptian blogger Kareem Amer for additional 45 days pending investigation. Kareem’s case was eventually referred to HSSP to consider it.

Kareem Amer, held in custody since 45 days ago, arrived at Eastern Alexandria Integral Court guarded closely by officers from State Security Service in Alexandria. Kareem was also prevented from seeing his lawyer from HRinfo. The lawyer insisted on demanding whether to trial him or to immediately release him, upon the fact that the investigations have already been completed one month ago. However, the prosecution sentenced him for additional 45 days in custody.

Kareem Amer told HRinfo, in spite of prevention, that he is detained incommunicado at Al-Hadra prison in Alexandria. Such detention circumstances applied on Kareem are considered punitive, although he did no crime.

In addition, Kareem’s family is prevented from visiting him. This is considered a sever violation of law.

HRinfo’s lawyer was astonished that she heard before the start of investigation that Kareem is decided to spend additional 45 days in custody; this already took place after investigation. Therefore, suspicions are aroused that there are no adherence to fairness standards, to the extent that detention period is decided even before interrogating the accused.

Arabic Network for Human Rights Information deplores these injustice and unfair practices, and announces that Kareem’s life is in danger because of his detention circumstances and depriving him from his family visits. That is in addition to entitling State Security Service, which is famous for its brutality, to supervise his case. HRinfo calls upon local and international civil society to protect the life of that young opinion prisoner who is denied his right to be trialed.

Visit HRINFO for more information regarding Kareem’s case.

By Dalia Ziada & Jese Sage -

In a cramped jail cell in Alexandria, Egypt, sits a soft-spoken 22-year-old student. Kareem Amer was remanded to over a month in prison for allegedly “defaming the President of Egypt” and “highlighting inappropriate aspects that harm the reputation of Egypt.” Where did Amer commit these supposed felonies? On his weblog.

If the Alexandria prosecutors’ standards of censorship were applied in the US, thousands of Americans would be behind bars. The Egyptian authorities’ decision to jail an obscure student for his blogposts reveals a larger struggle for free speech playing out between dissident bloggers and state prosecutors across the Middle East.

For decades, the region’s dictators maintained a monopoly on public information. Newspapers, radio stations, and national television broadcasts were nearly all owned by the state. These regime-controlled media outlets toed the government line, maligned political opponents, and blocked critical voices. By inverting the watchdog role of the press – where journalists expose, investigate, and question – what should be a critical independent institution was instead transformed into a mouthpiece for government propaganda.

The advent of blogs in the past few years, however, has reshaped the playing field. While some regimes (like Algeria) may still own the main printing presses and control the national supply of ink, any citizen can access free blogging services. Now an individual’s voice – even that of a random student at Al-Azhar University, like Kareem Amer – can reach audiences around the globe.

Regimes accustomed to control have struggled to respond. In Tunisia, web publisher Zouhair Yahyaoui was dragged from an Internet café by security forces and tortured into revealing his site’s password after he posted a quiz mocking President Zinedine Ben Ali. In Bahrain, the Information Ministry blocked the blog of entrepreneur Mahmoud Al-Yousif for covering a political scandal. In Iran, authorities arrested student Mojtaba Saminejad after he condemned the arrest of several fellow bloggers and “insulted the Supreme Leader.”

Protecting free speech in the Middle East hinges on the fate of young activists like Kareem Amer. Raised in a strict Islamic household, Amer was placed in Al-Azhar’s religious school system at the age of six and watched as his sisters were forced to quit school and wear the niqab (the full-body black veil). After 18 years in the rigid world of the Al Azhar system, Amer evidently felt trapped. Rather than embrace the religious establishment, he became a critic of discrimination against women and non-Muslims.

Blogging became Amer’s outlet – and his downfall. When Al-Azhar officials discovered a blogpost criticizing extremist professors, Amer was expelled and his case referred to the public prosecutor.

Although a human rights lawyer accompanied Amer to his interrogation, prosecutors made clear they were indicting Amer for his beliefs. “Do you fast on Ramadan?” they demanded. “Do you pray?” They even insisted he reveal his opinions on the Darfur crisis. Amer would not retract his blogposts, so prosecutors threw him in jail – and laughed at the human rights attorney present, openly mocking the concept of standing up for individual rights.

Only a few years ago, the arrest of a student at Al-Azhar would have been met with silence and indifference from the outside world. But today, hundreds of fellow bloggers and readers from around the world have raised the alarm. Over 1,500 have sent letters to the Egyptian government and the State Department demanding Amer’s release. The technology that has empowered unknown students in closed societies to speak to the world also gives readers everywhere the ability to rally together to protect free expression.

It also enabled Amer to smuggle blogposts out from his Alexandria cell. “A person using his brain and expressing his ideas freely,” he observed, “is more dangerous in our country than someone who destroys others’ property or deals drugs.”

Amer’s arrest – for writing on a website few people have ever read – comes as the future of the Middle East hangs in the balance. While recent years have witnessed a surge in young voices challenging the status quo, powerful forces are trying to close down that window of greater liberty. In the campaign to hold Egyptian authorities accountable for criminalizing free speech, much more than the fate of one young blogger is at stake.

Dalia Ziada is a staffer at the Cairo-based Arabic Network for Human Rights Information. Jesse Sage directs the HAMSA project of the American Islamic Congress.

Cairo – 7 December 2006,

Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (HRinfo) and Egyptian Observatory for Justice and Law (EOJL) call upon civil society and public opinion to support the opinion prisoner; Kareem Amer, who is imprisoned in Al-Hadra prison of Alexandria for some false charges. The real reason of his imprisonment is that he expressed his anti-governmental and anti-Islamic views on his own online articles.

Three lawyers from HRinfo and EOJL went yesterday to represent Kareem Amer before the prosecution. However, they were astonished with the misleading information given to them, in order to indirectly prevent them form representing Kareem, who was referred to Eastern Alexandria Prosecutor Office to be re-interrogated. Despite Kareem demanded to call for his lawyers who were awaiting him in Mohram Bek prosecutor office, his demand was denied and the prosecutor awarded him additional fifteen days in detention.

The lawyers were not waiting for Kareem alone; the judge of Mohram Bek Prosecution was waiting for him too. All of them were surprised when all the prisoners of Al-Hadra prison were brought to the prosecution excluding Kareem. The prisoners told the lawyers that the police and State Security Service took Kareem to Eastern Alexandria Prosecutor Office to interrogate him there. Then, the lawyers learnt that Kareem was awarded additional fifteen days, and his demand to wait for his lawyers was denied.

Arabic Network for Human Rights Information and Egyptian Observatory for Justice and Law (EOJL) call upon Egyptian and international civil society and public opinion to force the Egyptian government to eliminate its evasiveness and to immediately release Kareem Amer. If they believe that Kareem deserves punishment for what he wrote, they should refer him to court rather than renewing his detention. This is considered a sever violation of law and an arbitrary use of the hatful right of provisional detention.

Julie Stahl writes:

Jerusalem (CNSNews.com) – Watchdog groups are pressing for the release of an Egyptian blogger, arrested last month for posting articles critical of Islam on his Web log (blog).

They say Abdel Karim Nabil Suleiman, 22, is a victim of Egyptian attempts to limit freedom of expression on the Internet.

Suleiman, known by his Internet pseudonym Kareem Amer, was expelled from the Al-Azhar University earlier this year because he wrote critically about the role of religion in Egypt, the Middle East Media Research Institute reported on Thursday.

(Al-Azhar is the regarded as the highest Sunni Islamic learning institution in the region. The grand imam of al-Azhar mosque, Sheikh Mohammed Sayyed Tantawi, is one of the most senior Muslim clerics in Egypt.)

Suleiman also was arrested last year when he condemned violent Muslim reaction to a Coptic Christian play, which some Muslims considered offensive to Islam.

The Cairo-based Arabic Network for Human Rights Information and the Egyptian Observatory for Justice and Law are campaigning for Sulieman’s release. The groups say he’s been imprisoned on “false charges.”

“The real reason for his imprisonment is that he expressed his anti-governmental and anti-Islamic views in his own online articles,” the groups said.

According to the groups, which are providing legal representation for Suleiman, he was supposed to be questioned before a judge on Thursday in the presence of his lawyers, but police misinformed the lawyers about where the interrogation would be held and took Suleiman to a different court, where he was given another 15 days’ detention.

A petition calling for Suleiman’s release has been posted on the HAMSA (Hands Across the Middle East) website. HAMSA is an American Muslim organization that promotes civil rights in the Middle East.

HAMSA Director Jesse Sage said more than 1,500 people have sent emails to the Egyptian government and U.S. State Department demanding Suleiman’s release.

“This is the first time that someone [in Egypt] was arrested for what he wrote on a blog,” said Sage by telephone. Other bloggers have been arrested, but usually for participating in street demonstrations, he said.

In the last article posted before his arrest, Suleiman blasted clerics at Al-Azhar University and predicted he would be arrested for it.

“[To] Al-Azhar University, to the professors and sheikhs at Al-Azhar who stood and stand against anyone who thinks freely, I say: You will end up in the dustbin of history. Then you will find no one to cry for you,” Suleiman wrote according to a translation provided by MEMRI on Thursday.

According to Reporters Without Borders, Egypt is among the 13 countries known for violating freedom of expression on the Internet.

The Washington-based human rights advocacy group Freedom House said that the number of Egyptians with Internet access has more than quadrupled in the last five years but stands at less than six percent of the population.

“The Egyptian government does not engage in widespread online censorship, and online writers regularly criticize the government and launch concerted campaigns for political change,” Freedom House said on its website.

Nevertheless, it said that, “bloggers were arrested, detained without charge, and harassed by state security agents.”

Freedom House mentions Suleiman’s arrest. It also mentions the arrest of online editor Ahmad Abd-Allah, whose papers, books and hard drives were confiscated. According to Abd-Allah, during his interrogation he was pressured to close his website. But later he was released without charges on condition that he maintain contact with state security.

(Thanks to Egypeter for the link.)

Read the full report here.

We would like to correct Spiegel Online in their report about Kareem:

It is well after midnight when Abdel Kareem Sulaiman, 22, gets some uninvited company. Suddenly the door to his apartment bursts open and a squad of Egyptian security police officers storms into the room and arrests the drowsy Sulaiman on the spot.

This is not what happened.

Kareem went to the Prosecution Office with a lawyer, as stated here many times before. Please do not dramatize the situation for whatever purpose, we would like Kareem’s case to remain accurate at all times.