From Reporters Without Borders:

Call to French president to lobby President Mubarak about press freedom

Reporters Without Borders called today on French President Jacques Chirac to urge his Egyptian counterpart, Hosni Mubarak, to expand press freedom and release from prison blogger Abdel Kareem Nabil Suleiman (“Kareem Ameer”) and journalist Abd al-Munim Gamal al-Din Abd al-Munim when Mubarak visits France on 15 April.

“Egypt throws journalists and cyber-dissidents in jail and censors what they write to stifle the media and online activity,” the worldwide press freedom organisation said. “Egypt is one of France’s main economic partners in the region, but this partnership must include discussion about democratic reforms, which are not being made through lack of political will.

“Mubarak’s government continually abuses press freedom by silencing independent voices,“ it said. “The president refuses to reform the press law and give more guarantees to media workers, whose job is made dangerous by the existence of 35 offences for which they can be sent to prison, including up to five years for ‘false news,’ defaming the president or foreign heads of state and ‘undermining national institutions’ such as parliament and the army.

Kareem Amer was arrested on 6 November last year after posting articles on his blog www.karam903.blogspot.com denouncing government abuses and criticising the country’s religious institutions, especially the Sunni Al-Azhar University, where he studied law. He was sentenced on 22 February this year to three years in prison for “incitement to hatred of Islam” and one year for “insulting” Mubarak.

Reporters Without Borders is also very concerned about Abd al-Munim Gamal al-Din Abd al-Munim, of the twice-weekly Islamist paper Al-Shaab, organ of the Labour Party (Hizb al-Amal), who was arrested by state security (SSI) agents at his home in 1993. He was tried that year in the prosecution of the Islamist group Talia al Fatah and in February 1999 in a case about people expelled from Albania, but was cleared in both. However, the authorities refuse to give any information about him.