Later today (Monday) at 10am, Kareem’s final appeal will take place and Rawda Ahmed, his lawyer, will be there to hear the final decision.

We sincerely hope that the Egyptian government will do what they should have done over 3 years ago and conclude this tragedy by FREEING KAREEM.

Considering the amount of death threats Kareem has received both online and offline, his security will still be at risk and your support will be extremely crucial in keeping him safe regardless of the decision that takes place tomorrow morning.

According to a recent press release from the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information:

On 3 March 2008, one year after blogger Kareem Amer was sent to prison, HRinfo stated that the campaign launched by some independent newspapers has proven that Kareem Amer is innocent of the charge for which he was convicted: insulting the president. Amer was sentenced to one year’s imprisonment over an article that reported on an Islamic charity assembly in Damanhour city of Delta, stating that this assembly had described the president of the Republic as the “prince of believers” (like a Khalifa in old Islamic history).

The General Prosecution accused Amer of insulting the president, considered a crime under article 179 of the penal code, in an article written in 2005 entitled: “Vote for Mubarak. . . the prince of believers!”.

During the presidential elections, the Sheikh of Al-Azhar had called for support for President Mubarak, but the other Sheikhs refused. A group called “Prophet Mohammed Sunni Group of Supporters” then hung a large placard in Damanhour city that called on people to vote for Mubarak referring to him as “the prince of believers”. Amer contended that he had merely reported the facts when referencing this phrase.

In late February 2008, independent newspapers started to report on a charity assembly whose chairman insisted on referring to the president as the “prince of disbelievers.” This substantiates what was reported in Amer’s article, and his claim that it was not he who applied that phrase to the president.

Gamal Eid, executive director of Hrinfo said: “Kareem Amer was punished for criticizing an act that took place three years ago. Just today, he was proved to be right by ‘Al-Karama’ and ‘Al-Masry Al-Youm’ newspapers. This matter reveals how such articles of the penal code are flexible and vague and can be interpreted in the interest of, or against, anybody. Kareem Amer deserves to be acquitted of that accusation and we shall reject all other accusations against him when the case comes to the cassation court.”

The Jerusalem Post, via the AP:

Lawyers for a jailed Egyptian blogger have filed a complaint with the prosecutor-general’s office alleging their client is being held in solitary confinement and tortured in prison.

Lawyers with the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information and Hisham Mubarak Centre for Law demanded in the complaint, filed this week, that the prosecutor-general investigate the alleged abuses against their client, Abdel Kareem Nabil, who was sentenced in February to four years in prison for insulting Islam and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.

Nabil, who used the blogger name Kareem Amer, is a 22-year-old former student at Egypt’s Al-Azhar University who was a vocal secularist and sharp critic of conservative Muslims in his blog. His writings often lashed out at Al-Azhar – the most prominent religious center for Sunni Islam.

“I am a Muslim and I am proud of this. However, I will never agree with your shameful practices against my friend Kareem Amer. Clear?” – Dalia Ziada

Dalia Ziada is a human rights activist and translator based in Cairo. She has been one of the most supportive of Kareem’s friends during his difficult times.

Dalia has recently learnt that a poem she wrote in support of Kareem has caught the attention of Egypt’s State Security Service. Consequently, her blog is currently among the 50 Web sites Kareem Amer’s appeals judge wants to be banned from Internet users in Egypt. (Learn more about this from HRINFO).

Despite being a devout Muslim, Dalia is being accused of contempting religion because of her poetry. So far, it seems they are only interested in blocking her blog. However, if the claim is transferred to a criminal court, she may be handed a minimum sentence of three years. The judge is also trying to have her Tharwa_Egypt Web site down because of a published article she co-wrote in support of Kareem.

Quite frankly, this campaign would have progressed little were it not for her efforts. In fact, it was Dalia arranged for Kareem Amer to have a lawyer accompany him to the prosecutor’s office last year. It was Dalia who helped us get in touch with Kareem’s lawyers. It’s Dalia who publicly expressed support for Kareem several times (for example, here, here, and here), and she verified our translations of his writings for the world to read.

It is due to this poem that Kareem’s appeals judge is getting her into trouble – she did nothing libelous or defamatory and was simply trying to assuage a friend while he was in prison.

Dalia: If something happens to you, the entire world is going to rebel against it, and we are willing to do everything in our power to ensure this fact. Our main mission would be to help you and Kareem.

Because Kareem was jailed without the authorities facing any consequences, they clearly feel they have the power to now silence more people they disagree with. This is why we need Kareem freed. He is a symbol for our liberty. As the saying goes, the only way evil will prevail is if good people do nothing. If the world remains silent, it will cost us dearly. Our silence would be a peaceful consent to the Egyptian government’s actions.

If you wish to express support for Dalia, please leave a comment on her blog. Let’s show the judge that we’re not going to allow anything to happen to our friend!

For further information on why Dalia is supporting Kareem, read an interview we conducted with her here.

Just recently, Ana Ikhwan blogger Abdul Mon’em Mahmoud, who has previously expressed solidarity for Kareem, was arrested and is being held for at least two weeks pending an investigation. The Egyptian government is not taking lightly his blogging on security officials’ acts of torture, as well as random detentions suffered by Egyptians.

The Free Kareem Coalition expresses its deep concern for the detention of Abdul Mon’em and hopes for his release. A Web site has been set up campaigning for his freedom: الحرية لعبد المنعم (Arabic).

Reporters Without Borders weighs in:

Call for release of blogger who reports on torture of detainees

Voicing concern about increasingly repressive policies towards online dissent, Reporters Without Borders called today for the release of blogger Abdul-Moneim Mahmud, who was arrested on 14 April at Cairo airport. He has been charged with membership of an “illegal organisation” (the Muslim Brotherhood), but his arrests seems to be linked to the photos and reports about the torture of detainees that he has posted on line.

“This arrest comes two months after another blogger, Abdel Kareem Nabil Suleiman, was sentenced to four years in prison,” Reporters Without Borders said. “These two young men hold very different views, but they have a common desire to denounce President Hosni Mubarak’s authoritarianism and the constant human rights violations in Egypt. We hope the authorities will free them and undertake to respect the principle of the free flow of information online.”

The state prosecutor’s office in Shoubra Al-Khaima ordered that Mahmud should be held for at least two weeks while he is investigated for alleged membership and financing of an illegal movement. Many local sources say he has in fact been targeted for reporting arbitrary arrests and acts of torture by the security services on his blog, Ana Ikhwan, and on the Muslim Brotherhood’s website.

Mahmud covered demonstrations organised by the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood and circulated photos of police brutality on the Internet. Aged 27 and a journalism graduate of Cairo university, he is also a correspondent for the satellite TV station Al-Hiwar (The dialogue).

Suleiman, who is better known by his blogger pseudonym of “Kareem Amer”, was arrested on 6 November 2006 because of articles he had posted on his blog, in which he often condemned the government’s authoritarian excesses and criticised Egypt’s highest religious institutions, especially the Sunni university of Al-Azhar, where he studied law. He was sentenced on 22 February to three years in prison for “inciting hatred of Islam” and one year for “insulting” the president.

Egypt is on the Reporters Without Borders list of “13 Internet Enemies”. Read our weekly “blog review” and create your blog with Reporters without borders : www.rsfblog.org

The Arabic Network for Human Rights Information: The Police Broke into a Journalist Blogger’s Residence Anxieties for a Torture Crime

Cairo On 14 April 2007

The Arabic Network for Human Rights Information HRinfo expresses anxiety and fear for the life of the journalist blogger Abdel Men’em Mahmoud, in which on Friday dawn security forces in Alexandria broke into his residence to arrest him. The incident is a result to a campaign practiced by the police in Cairo and Alexandria to arrest 42 Egyptians suspected of belonging to the Muslim Brothers Group.

Security forces on Friday Dawn, broke into the residence of Abdel Men’em Mahmoud reporter of Al-Hiwar TV and administrator of the celebrate blog “Ana Ikhwan”
(http://ana-ikhwan.blogspot.com) to arrest him. However, Mahmoud was not home at this hour, and because he was tortured in a previous episode for 13 days before, he disappeared to make sure of the reasons for this campaign, which probably could be his activities in media coverage to police quelling practices against Muslim Brothers’ activists.

On the other hand, the 27 years old blogger Abdel Men’em Mahmoud has expressed to a friend his haziness between subjecting to torture similarly to 2003 incident
(” http://ana-ikhwan.blogspot.com/2007/01/25.html) and fearing of terrifying his aged parents by the police to force him to surrender. However, he received news of the large number of armed forced broke into.

In light of HRinfo’s condemnation to “Dawn Visitors” system practiced by security forces which, was practiced on a wide range previously against political opposition, it calls upon the Minister of Interior and the General – Prosecutor to provide reasons for this new incident.
However, the blogger is not a student or a member in what the Interior Ministry claims of a sport show held by some Muslim Brothers’ students to be a “military training” and his activities is concentrated on media and writing on his blog.

Moreover, HRinfo calls upon all civil society organizations and independent media to join forces to stop the unjust campaign against activist, students and academics did not practice any wrong just adopting different ideas, which is a guaranteed right to all.

In another occasion, HRinfo invites bloggers, journalists and activists to join forces with the assembly organized today at 5 pm before Journalists’ Syndicate, by bloggers carrying computers’ “keyboards” to declare their denial to arresting bloggers and join forces with Abdel Men’em Mahmoud the journalist blogger.

Last November, Kareem wrote three letters while he was held in prison. Below is the translation of the first letter.

Many thanks to Ismail El-Naggar, who translated it to English. You can read the Arabic version here: رسالة من خلف القضبان.

A Letter from Behind Bars

I started writing these words shortly after I was brought back from the prosecution. I had been detained for two days at the cell of the Moharram Bek Police Station, after the General Prosecution ordered that an investigation be opened with me for my viewpoints published on the Internet. Today, the prosecution ordered my detention for fifteen days. Surprisingly, I’ve been detained at the same place with suspected drug dealers, drug addicts, thieves, and killers just for freely expressing my views. I had never taken into consideration that this may be regarded as a crime that would cause my detention in extremely poor conditions, unsuitable even for beasts and livestock. Such inhumane conditions are imposed by force upon a man whose sole fault is that he openly, frankly, and transparently expressed his inner self.

I am not sad! I will never let them have the chance to psychologically ruin me by such arbitrary acts, which are mastered only by idiots. Such idiots have rigid thoughts with no power to stand firm against any free thinking that challenges well-established truths. They resort to full violence and cruelty to suppress it – an expression of their inability to confront it with counter thinking. The aim is to silence the voice of birds singing outside their own herd. They will never achieve such a goal!

Day after day, this impotent trick, adopted by Al-Azhar University by employing its barbaric and foolish acts, proves that Al-Azhar is nothing but an environment that spreads backwardness and ignorance. In addition, it keeps urging people to be satisfied with their disgraceful conditions. This is done through discouraging them from thinking, through disrupting their minds, and through chasing those who use their minds in questioning what is illogically imposed on them.

I announce, from my detention cell, that nothing and no one will ever make me submit. Even when my hands are in chains and my freedom of movement is denied, this will only make me stronger and more stubborn in my confrontation with the enemies of mankind disguised under the cover of religion.

My day was hard indeed. I was transferred from the cell to the prosecution while my hands and the hands of two other prisoners were tied together in chains. One of my hands was released, and the other remained tied to the hand of one of the two prisoners unti the session came to an end. I was then brought back again to the cell. I cannot withstand the weather around me, as I’m detained at an underground cell that has only two windows. The breath of fresh air is an extremely difficult task through such windows. Furthermore, since my detention on Monday, I could not use the water closet because it simply does not befit human beings. However, all of this will never make me abandon, even for a moment, any of my convictions that I have expressed and which have lead to my imprisonment.

In the aftermath of my release last year, I wrote some words that I still remember: That the human being experiences plights and misfortunes that either make him submissive and weaken his stubbornness or that strengthen him. I’m fully certain that my current plight will, like its predecessor, make me more capable of confrontation and more stubborn in the face of the enemies of mankind, who are frightened by any free voice singing outside the herd.

Let them imprison me if they wish! They will never rob anything from me, for my freedom exists inside me. They will never deprive me of it regardless of how heavy their chains are, or how narrow their cells are.

Finally, I’d like to express my deepest thanks and gratitude to all those who expressed solidarity with me in my current plight. Special thanks are due to lawyer Rawda Ahmed, as well as the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information and its manager, Mr. Gamal Eid. From the depths of my soul, I thank my Bahraini friend Esra’a Al-Shafei, whom I heard had launched a Web site demanding my release. Moreover, from the depths of my soul, I thank my dear friend Dalia Ziada, who proved to be a real-life example of the proverb “some friends are brothers not delivered by your mother”. Every time I read her poems and remember her words, my belief and certainty that those who fail to say “no” do not deserve life increases.

I send my sincere greetings to Sahar, the one I fell in love with at first sight and who inspired me so much. Through her stances that reject all forms of male domination forced upon her and any female in life, I found that she is a rebellion that walks on two legs. She made me more convinced that the natural human is one who does not submit or tend to make others submit. I will never forget you, Sahar, no matter how long I will be spending my time behind bars.

Abdul Kareem Nabil Suleiman
November 8, 2006
The Civil Detention Cell, Moharram Bek Police Station, Alexandria

News from Dalia Ziada, an Egyptian blogger and human rights activist working on Kareem’s case:

The trial is adjourned to 22 Feb. The defense memorundum must be submitted within one week.

The judge decided not to listen to oral defense because the two sides (the extremists and our lawyers) were about to fight with each other today!

The earlier update from Dalia:

Kareem is in a very bad situation. Do you remember the extremist lawyer who filed a claim against Kareem during the last session? He is now supported with other ten lawyers.

Our lawyers told me that they descriped Kareem as a disbeliever. This offended our lawyers and made them threaten the other lawyers to be charged with defamation if they continued to describe Kareem as a disbeliever, and the court accepted our lawyers’ demand to respect Kareem.

On the other hand, Kareem’s lawyers insisted on their demands announced last session which included without limitation to having experts from the country at which Rezgar website is operated. The judges are expecting the sentence now.

News from Dalia of HRINFO -

I have just learnt from HRinfo lawyer who is representing Kareem with other two lawyers fro Hisham Mubark Center for Law and Association for Human Rights Legal Aid, that:

-The trial is postponed to 25 January upon the demand of defence for reviewing the file.
-Kareem is is detained in a solitary jail and he is prevented from seeing his family and they give him only one meal each two days.
-Kareem came to court in prisoner’s suit and he was accompanied by soldiers from the State Security Service who prevented him from talking to his lawyers.

I am so sorry to tell you that Kareem is suffering horrible and inhuman imprisonment circumstances.

Here are the photos -

After referring his case to “injustice” State Security Prosecution, Kareem Amer is sentenced to additional 45 days in custody

Cairo – 19 December 2006,

The Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (HRinfo) condemns Higher State Security Prosecution (HSSP) decision to hold in custody the Egyptian blogger Kareem Amer for additional 45 days pending investigation. Kareem’s case was eventually referred to HSSP to consider it.

Kareem Amer, held in custody since 45 days ago, arrived at Eastern Alexandria Integral Court guarded closely by officers from State Security Service in Alexandria. Kareem was also prevented from seeing his lawyer from HRinfo. The lawyer insisted on demanding whether to trial him or to immediately release him, upon the fact that the investigations have already been completed one month ago. However, the prosecution sentenced him for additional 45 days in custody.

Kareem Amer told HRinfo, in spite of prevention, that he is detained incommunicado at Al-Hadra prison in Alexandria. Such detention circumstances applied on Kareem are considered punitive, although he did no crime.

In addition, Kareem’s family is prevented from visiting him. This is considered a sever violation of law.

HRinfo’s lawyer was astonished that she heard before the start of investigation that Kareem is decided to spend additional 45 days in custody; this already took place after investigation. Therefore, suspicions are aroused that there are no adherence to fairness standards, to the extent that detention period is decided even before interrogating the accused.

Arabic Network for Human Rights Information deplores these injustice and unfair practices, and announces that Kareem’s life is in danger because of his detention circumstances and depriving him from his family visits. That is in addition to entitling State Security Service, which is famous for its brutality, to supervise his case. HRinfo calls upon local and international civil society to protect the life of that young opinion prisoner who is denied his right to be trialed.

Visit HRINFO for more information regarding Kareem’s case.

Cairo – 7 December 2006,

Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (HRinfo) and Egyptian Observatory for Justice and Law (EOJL) call upon civil society and public opinion to support the opinion prisoner; Kareem Amer, who is imprisoned in Al-Hadra prison of Alexandria for some false charges. The real reason of his imprisonment is that he expressed his anti-governmental and anti-Islamic views on his own online articles.

Three lawyers from HRinfo and EOJL went yesterday to represent Kareem Amer before the prosecution. However, they were astonished with the misleading information given to them, in order to indirectly prevent them form representing Kareem, who was referred to Eastern Alexandria Prosecutor Office to be re-interrogated. Despite Kareem demanded to call for his lawyers who were awaiting him in Mohram Bek prosecutor office, his demand was denied and the prosecutor awarded him additional fifteen days in detention.

The lawyers were not waiting for Kareem alone; the judge of Mohram Bek Prosecution was waiting for him too. All of them were surprised when all the prisoners of Al-Hadra prison were brought to the prosecution excluding Kareem. The prisoners told the lawyers that the police and State Security Service took Kareem to Eastern Alexandria Prosecutor Office to interrogate him there. Then, the lawyers learnt that Kareem was awarded additional fifteen days, and his demand to wait for his lawyers was denied.

Arabic Network for Human Rights Information and Egyptian Observatory for Justice and Law (EOJL) call upon Egyptian and international civil society and public opinion to force the Egyptian government to eliminate its evasiveness and to immediately release Kareem Amer. If they believe that Kareem deserves punishment for what he wrote, they should refer him to court rather than renewing his detention. This is considered a sever violation of law and an arbitrary use of the hatful right of provisional detention.