When Kareem’s friends were denied entry to the prison in order to visit him, we knew that something’s up. Today a report from The Arab Network for Human Rights Information documents the fact that Kareem is being harrassed by both prison guards and other inmates, and is in poor physical condition. The report reads:

The Arab Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI) reported today from the “Borg Al-Arab” prison, in the Alexandrian desert, that Kareem Amer, the author and the prisoner for practicing his freedom of expression was prevented from leaving his cell to be exposed to sunlight, in addition to the seizure of some of his books and the ill-treatment he is receiving from his fellow prisoners on orders from the prison administration.

The ANHRI lawyer Rawda Ahmed had already visited Amer in prison yesterday; she was shocked to find him in poor health. She then knew from him that the prison administration has deprived him from going out of his cell to the prison yard, to get exposed to the sun like all other prisoners, besides the harassments by his prison inmates who were incited to do so by the administration. some of his own books were seized from the cell that is always under the administration’s control.

ANHRI’s Legal Aid Unit’s Rawda noticed that Amer suffers double-standard treatment in prison; for example during visits, he is being treated according to the strict rules that apply to political prisoners, however he is being withheld in the division of the criminal prisoners, which means he is being treated like them, and accordingly deprived from all his rights as a political prisoner.

The restriction on Kareem Amer is not just from the Prison’s administration’s side, however it has extended to the Prosecution Office, who have declined his case filing, which his lawyers from the ANHRI has presented ten months ago; since then no investigation has taken place, inspite of having raised this case to the Prosecutor General.

The ANHRI stated “it is hell on its own to be prisonned inside [another form of] prison meanwhile being in jail, he is already a prisoner, what else do they want from him?”

The Arab Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI) demands that Kareem Amer gets treated like any ordinary prisoner inside the jail, with neither special treatment nor constraints, until the court decides in his appeal, which we hope it will be fair with him, after the trials that he had in both the First degree court and in the court of Appeal.

Additional Information:
Kareem Amer gets tortured in Borg Al-Arab prison

About Kareem Amer, the prisoner for the freedom of Expression and Opinion

We are preparing some events for Kareem and hope that all his supporters worldwide will not give up fighting for his immediate and unconditional release. Please contact us to see how you can take effective action.

Update: Today (Sept. 1) Reporters Without Borders also launched a similarly worded press release condemning his prison conditions.

Alaa Al Aswany is an up and coming Egyptian author, who, in an article detailing his writing career, mentions Kareem briefly as to why young bloggers are at risk in Egypt:

Al Aswany concedes that his success may have given him greater freedom as a writer. “A young blogger could be arrested easily.” He cites Kareem Amer, serving four years in jail for a blog deemed insulting to religion and the president, and his own friend Ibrahim Issa, editor-in-chief of the oppositional daily Al-Dustour, who is facing a six-month prison sentence for speculating on the health of the elderly president. “It’s a pretext – they wanted him in prison by any means.”

Read the full article from The Guardian here.

Kareem is mentioned in one of Menassat’s latest articles:

Egyptian courts are being flooded these days with so-called ‘Hesba’ lawsuits targeting outspoken writers, film makers and poets. According to Islamic law, anyone can file a Hesba lawsuit if they believe God has been insulted. But some suggest that money, fame and political repression play an equally important part in the recent rise of Hesba cases.

BEIRUT, August 18, 2008 (MENASSAT) – The latest figure to get tangled up in the murky waters of Hesba law suits is movie director Enad El-Dighaidy, whose film, Diaries of a Teenage Girl, has attracted the wrath of an attorney affiliated with Egypt’s ruling NDP party.

The unnamed lawyer is said to have vast experience in Hesba lawsuits and has asked the Sheikh of Egypt’s highest religious council, Al Azhar, to punish the female director with 80 lashes for defaming the country.

Sources told MENASSAT that the same lawyer has sought similar punishment against an Egyptian actress who appeared unveiled in a film. Last year, he was one of the lawyers who lobbied for putting Ibrahim Eissa, editor-in-chief of the independent newspaper Al-Dustour, on trial for publishing pieces questioning the health of Egypt’s 81-year-old President Mubarak.

Blogger Kareem Amer

The Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI, an Egyptian NGO) recently commissioned a study of the Hesba cases, which it has called “a nightmare for authors and artists.” ANHRI argued that the large increase in such lawsuits could not have happened “without the blessing of the Egyptian government.”

“There was a significant increase in Hesba cases in both 2007 and 2008. Most of the lawsuits have been political Hesba cases,” ANHRI Director Gamal Eid told MENASSAT.

Bloggers too have been targeted by the Hesba frenzy.

Two years ago, Kareem Amer, a 21-year-old student from Al Azhar University, had expressed his strong dissatisfaction with the Egyptian regime and the teachings of his university on his blog.

When in early 2006, Amer wrote that “the professors and sheikhs at Al Azhar, who stand against anyone who thinks freely, will end up in the dustbin of history,” he was expelled from his university and his professors filed a complaint with the General Prosecutor.

The Hesba suit against Amer was first rejected by a regular court but was upheld by an appeals court. In February 2007, Kareem Amer was handed a four-year prison sentence for “insulting Islam and the Egyptian President and inciting sedition.”

It was the first time Egypt sentenced a blogger to prison.

Read the rest of the article here.

Close friends of Kareem who attempted to visit him several times within the past few weeks expressed concern at the fact that they were never able to. It appears to be that no one can visit him anymore without some sort of permission. Many visitors were turned away, including his friends who notified us of this. We are trying to find more information on this weird new visitation policy and will write about it shortly.

Africal Liberty recently published this appeal to Egypt, requesting that blogger Kareem Amer and democracy activist Saad Eddin Ibrahim be freed:

We make a special appeal to the Egyptian Authorities to give meaning to the very existence of man–to pursue his lawful goals without let or hindrance; that the basis for such expression lays in the freedom of thought and speech.

Democracy activist Saad Eddin Ibrahim has just been convicted and sentenced to two years in prison for allegedly making unpalatable comments on bilateral trade agreements between Egypt and the United States. A young Egyptian student blogger named Abdul Kareem Nabil Soliman is languishing in a Cairo jail for allegedly defaming the Egyptian President and questioning the Islamisation of his University, Al-Azhar University. Kareem has served two out of a four-year sentence handed him in a kangaroo-like court after truncated investigations.

Obviously, incarcerating people for merely expressing their thoughts can only mean one thing- they live under a repressive regime. We have hoped that African countries that callously suppressed freedom of speech would learn from others such as Ghana. Egypt risks being categorized into the infamous league of repressive states (if not already) if Saad, Kareem and any other persons suffering similar fate continue to be held in prison.

Link to original article.