The 16th Reporters Without Borders – Fondation de France prize awarded today [5th of December] in Paris:

The young Egyptian blogger Kareem Amer is the laureate in the Cyber-dissident category. The 23-year-old was sentenced to four years in jail for criticism posted on his blog of President Hosni Mubarak and of the Islamist grip on the country’s universities.

Read full report here.

This news has been featured in Le Monde, France’s most prominent newspaper:

RSF récompense le blogueur égyptien Kareem Ader, emprisonné pour quatre ans

Premier blogueur jugé et condamné en Egypte pour ses écrits, le jeune Abdel Kareem Nabil Suleiman, plus connu sous le nom de Kareem Amer, a reçu le prix “Reporters sans frontières (RSF) – Fondation de France” pour l’année 2007 dans la catégorie “cyberdissident”, mercredi 5 décembre.

Read full news article here.

The Christian Science Monitor also reports:

RSF’s cyberdissident laureate was Egyptian blogger Abdel Kareem Nabil, sentenced in February to four years in prison for insulting Islam and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. The 23-year-old former student at Egypt’s Al-Azhar University, who used the blogger name Kareem Amer, sharply criticized conservative Muslims in his blog. His lawyers allege he is being held in solitary confinement and tortured in prison.

Read full article here.

Heise online also contributed a special report on the RSF award ceremony:

Egyptian blogger receives human rights prize:

In Paris, Egyptian blogger Kareem Amer was awarded this year’s Human Rights Prize in the category “Internet dissident” by Reporters without Borders and “Fondation de France”. In February, Abdel Kareem Nabil Suleiman, as he is called in real life, was sentenced to four years of imprisonment for publicly criticizing President Hosni Mubarak and the way the country’s universities are strictly operated according to Islam. In his weblog, Amer showed how Mubarak put pressure on religious leaders to support him.

[...]

As Reporters without Borders puts it, the prizes are awarded to those who make a special contribution to freedom of the press and human rights. Each of the four prizes in the categories of journalists, Internet dissident, medium, and organization, include 2500 euros.

Read the full article here.

Read HRINFO’s press release [Arabic] here.

Rawda, Kareem’s lawyer, traveled to France to get the prize on behalf of Kareem.