Mutual friend who blogs at Wa7damasrya has just returned from visiting Kareem in prison. Her remarks are the following:

I have just returned from visiting Kareem. Again, I have to say that putting him there is a horrible injustice. I could no longer bare seeing him there with all those criminals.

Guards continue to shout and use wood sticks with prisoners as if they are not human beings. Kareem and his ilk are treated like animals. She says:

Every time I go there, I feel so disappointed that my country has gotten this corrupt. I was thinking about Susan Mubarak, or “Mama Susan” as I used to say as a child, I just wish that she could live that experience one day… to actually visit the prison, to see one of her own sons being abused and sentenced to prison simply because he wrote his thoughts.

Kareem is fine. He was on a strike after they put him in the same cell with criminals who were accused of actual crimes like violence or abuse. He told me they will put him back in the cell of political prisoners.

I let him talk as much as he wants because he needed that. We stayed longer than they allowed us to during my previous visit.

The good news is that Kareem has agreed upon receiving the money that we have collected so far for the past year of our campaign. He will be sent 500 LE each month. Feel free to contact our treasurer to know of the details.

Many thanks to Wa7damasrya whose help and courage we could not succeed without. Visiting political prisoners in Egypt is certainly not easy and for her to do that means that she’s a true woman of her word and a real friend, both to us and to Kareem.

Kareem’s latest letter from prison is still in the process of being translated and we’ll share it as soon as it’s ready.

Unfortunately, there are many people who claim that this website is either owned, funded, or managed by HAMSA or the American Islamic Congress.

Nothing can be further from the truth.

This is an independent campaign, run solely by a group of students who volunteer their time to blog about, publicize, and run this website and its many activities.

HAMSA provides neither the counseling nor funding for us, but did play a role in discussing Kareem’s situation with media outlets, because they were the first to start a petition for him. But that petition is not part of this website. In fact we have a separate independent petition as well, which actually belongs to this website. This shows that HAMSA and the Free Kareem campaign are not related, in any way, or else we wouldn’t have created a separate petition about it.

This campaign is hosted by Mideast Youth, also completely independent of outside efforts and influences.

As for me, Esra’a, I did this campaign because I consider Kareem to be a good person and a good friend despite disagreeing with everything he wrote about (I’m proudly a Muslim.) That is as far as the reasoning goes for why this campaign exists and why we managed to create a lot of noise with it. Dalia Ziada, despite her activities with HAMSA and AIC, occasionally works on this campaign as she was the person responsible for giving me all of Kareem’s news for publication on this website as well as any relevant translations. This was before her official involvement with AIC, and she did it independently… just another friend helping Kareem out.

As far as our donation goes, contrary to popular belief we are not personally gaining anything from it and it’s quite disgusting to stomach these rumors. The money is handled by Chris Kilmer, a student in New York (also not part of AIC or HAMSA), who will transfer the money to Shahinaz (Wa7damasrya) who will then take the money to Kareem. It doesn’t take a brain surgeon to realize that we cannot act upon the money as soon as we get it simply because we need to think of the strategy on exactly how much we should send, where to, and how often. That’s why we took a while to find both a reliable person to handle the money as well as an effective plan, as well as asking Kareem what he wants to do with the finances. We wanted to make sure that we raised enough money before sending the money on a monthly basis. We weren’t using the money to vacation in Hawaii like some people made it sound like. Please do your research before defaming and undermining our work like this.

As far as sending the money to Kareem’s lawyers, this is not pay for such services. The donation option is for Kareem and Kareem only, and HRINFO has neither contacted us about this option nor did they ever reply to our attempts to contact them personally. In any case, they are not entitled to this money. It is meant to keep Kareem as comfortable as possible by sending him basic needs as well as any amount he requests for. If HRINFO is concerned about the donation option – they are more than welcome to contact us, but they have yet to do so. Therefore we cannot be blamed for not being clear enough when people spent more time feeding rumors than to actually research this themselves, by simply calling or e-mailing us about the issues that they don’t find clear enough.

If you would have noticed, for those who actually were responsible enough to contact me and my fellow campaigners, you’d soon realize that any decision went solely by me and was not approved or run by anyone else. That proves that I hold complete responsibility for this campaign, not HAMSA, not AIC, not Bush, not Ghandi. This is independent. It will always be independent, and we will never ever attach this to any other NGO because we want to lead it ourselves the way we see fit. If you care about Kareem you are more than welcome to join us and find out how the management truly works. If not, then please be decent enough not to link us with any organization without having any basis for such claims. Receiving an organization’s occasional help, especially in gaining press contacts, does not mean we are a part of them.

In other words, spare us the rumors, and let’s all focus on freeing Kareem instead.

Read Shahinaz’s post as well for further clarifications.

Jason Guberman-Pfeffer of Sacred Heart University includes Kareem in an article against extremism:

There are growing numbers of courageous individuals like him, from Irshad Manji to the tortured Bangladeshi journalist Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury to the imprisoned Egyptian blogger Abdul Kareem Nabeel Suleiman. Unfortunately, they often have to spend as much time fighting their enemies as those who should be taken for granted as friends.

Read the full article here.

Kareem has very recently sent a letter to mutual friend Shahi (blogging at Wa7da Masrya) who will make it available on her blog shortly. The letter will be translated into English within this week and considered for publication in large newspapers which we hope will collaborate with us as Kareem wants this letter to be read by as many people as possible.

As a follow-up to our previous entry, we have just launched this video as a visual response to Mrs. Mubarak’s “peace” activities.

The Earth Times report that up to 800 participants aged 18-25 gathered in a Sharm el-Sheikh resort to discuss peaceful means of communication within the troubled region.

Suzan Mubarak, Egypt’s first lady and core member/sponsor of the Women’s International Peace Movement, shares her insight with the young and diverse delegates:

“Peace is not a far-fetched idea. Youth is the most solid resource base,” Mubarak said in her opening speech. “Listening is a great start, but acting upon what you hear is more important.”

Unfortunately, acting upon what he heard is precisely what Kareem did, and he is facing prison time for it. We believe that with Kareem still in prison many youth writers, human rights activists, and even just mere students interested in free speech will take this message as a threat. Kareem is an example of a grand error which we hope to see corrected by the Egyptian government.

Hopefully Suzan Mubarak, who has done an excellent job preaching peace and tolerance, becomes more aware of Kareem’s imprisonment and perhaps tries to influence the authorities to free him which would give her words more practical strength. It’s indeed very important to act upon what one hears, but it’s quite dangerous for such youth activists to do that if fear and punishment is a risk, which is why it would make more sense for Egypt to correct the mistake of imprisoning Kareem which will be a positive example and reflection of Suzan Mubarak’s great words.

Read the full article here, which is very hopeful, but our friend Kareem is still in prison due to free speech and we wonder how quickly this can be addressed for the sake of real peace in Egypt and the rest of the Arab world.

CPB is back and we are honored to be their sponsors for this very important project. You can read their latest article about Kareem here.

It’s no wonder why we jumped at the opportunity. With Kareem still in prison, and the disappointingly silent regional blogosphere turning a blind eye, thus forgetting the fight for this brave, innocent, and deserving young man, we can anticipate more bloggers being thrown in prison. Our governments are now assured that they can get away with it.

It’s important for our readers to realize that we are not fighting merely for an individual; we are fighting for the rights of everyone within the region to be able to express their opinion in the condition that they do not preach and incite violence or racism (and Kareem did neither.)

A great way to get involved in the fight for the basic right of free speech and blogger freedom is to get involved in the next worldwide rally for Kareem, where supporters from all over the world can spread their concerns directly to the authorities via Egyptian embassies and offices in its various locations.