Recent article in the Arab Times Online about blogging in the Middle East and North Africa highlights Kareem’s case:
But blogs in North Africa are not without risk. Karim Amer, 22, landed four years’ detention last year on charges of criticising Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Islam on his blog, Al Azhar.
Read full article here.
This is the latest press release from Reporters Without Borders, which also highlights Kareem’s case:
Reporters Without Borders hails the decision taken by the administrative court of Egypt’s state council on 29 December not to block access to 51 websites which judge Abdel Fattah Murad, the head of the Alexandria court, had accused of defaming and attacking the president.
“This is good news for online free expression in Egypt,” the press freedom organisation said. “The real reason Murad wanted to block these sites was their reference to the charge of ‘intellectual dishonesty’ made against him last February. This ruling raises our hopes about respect for free speech on the Egyptian Internet and we would like to think that similar ones will follow, for example, in the case of Kareem Amer, a young blogger who has been imprisoned for criticising the president and others.”
A total of 21 sites, including Baheyya and Gharbeia, two popular blogs, and the site of the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information, were initially accused of attacking the president by Judge Murad on 11 March, after allegations circulated on the blogosphere that a book by the judge on the Internet’s legal challenges had been plagiarised. The judge subsequently added another 30 websites to his complaint.
The administrative court ruled that the sites were just content hosts and, as such, not responsible for the comments that might be posted on them. Judge Ahmed Hassaan, the head of the administrative court, refused to block the sites and denied that they had violated the constitution, as Murad had claimed.
The ruling has been hailed as “historic” by the Egyptian blogosphere. Gamal Eid, the head of the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information, said he was “delighted” by the decision. It presaged a “return to normal” for the Egyptian Internet and recognised “the right of Egyptian citizens to have access to a free network,” he said.
Egypt is one of the world’s most repressive countries as regards online activity. Two bloggers were arrested in 2007, including Kareem Amer, who was sentenced to four years in prison on charges of insulting President Hosni Mubarak and inciting hatred of Islam in comments criticising the government’s authoritarian and religious excesses.
Click here for the link.
We sent a set of the donation money to Kareem and have reported it here. Kareem recently sent a letter confirming that he received this money, and thanks everyone involved in either donating or sending it. A copy of this letter will be later scanned and we intend on translating it to English for our international audience.
We are going to send a new set of the donation money to Kareem on Sunday.
Update: Kareem also received books from supporters. If you want to send books or other material to Kareem, we strongly recommend Fedex, if you want it to get there fast and securely. Please be careful on what you send, anything too controversial might put him in trouble. You can find his prison address here.
Thanks to everyone who sent Kareem letters of support, books, money, and helped us fight for his freedom. Your efforts will never go unnoticed and is greatly appreciated. Thank you!
Thanks to Olof Jönsson, a Swedish article about Kareem and our campaign for him was featured recently here.
Thanks again to Olof for collaborating with us; it is always a great pleasure to see people determined to help and report on Kareem’s case!
Marshall Kirkpatrick of the Read Write Web blog includes Kareem in a new entry today that covers the shutting down of “Think Secret:”
Another college student named Abdul Kareem Nabeel Suleiman is spending years in an Egyptian prison for blogging critically about Islam and the government he was born under. Another Egyptian, Wael Abbas, is presumably living his life on the run and had his YouTube account erased by Google after years of documenting government torture there.
Free speech and investigative journalism are of the utmost importance and none of these new media scribes deserve the treatment they are recieving. All of them, and many others, deserve our vehement support.
