Egyptian Blogger Gets 4 Years in Prison

My favorite part: "Seconds after the door was closed, an Associated Press reporter heard a slap from inside the truck and a scream."

• WHERE ARE THE ACLU, VARIOUS LAWYERS GUILDS, AMNESTY INT'L., WORLD COURT, THE GOVERNMENTS OF FRANCE, GERMANY, VENEZUELA, UNITED FOR PEACE AND JUSTICE, GEORGE SOROS AND EVERY OTHER SELF-SEEKING SANCTIMONIOUS PHONY?

ALEXANDRIA, Egypt(AP) -- An Egyptian blogger was convicted Thursday and sentenced to four years in prison for insulting Islam and Egypt's president, sending a chill through fellow Internet writers who fear a government crackdown.

• The Committee to Protect Journalists, a New York-based media rights group, said Internet writers and editors are the fastest growing segment of imprisoned journalists, with 49 behind bars as of December.

"With this verdict, Egypt has opened up a new front in its efforts to stifle media freedoms," said Joel Campagna, the group's senior Middle East program coordinator.

Judge Ayman al-Akazi sentenced Nabil to three years in prison for insulting Islam and the Prophet Muhammad and inciting sectarian strife and another year for insulting President Hosni Mubarak.

• Nabil, sitting in the defendant's pen, did not react as the verdict was read and made no comments as he was led to a prison truck outside. Seconds after the door was closed, an Associated Press reporter heard a slap from inside the truck and a scream.

Egypt, a top U.S. ally in the Mideast, arrested a number of bloggers last year, most of them for connections to the pro-democracy reform movement. Nabil was put on trial while other bloggers were freed -- a sign of the sensitivity of his writings on religion.

Nabil, who used the blogger name Kareem Amer, was an unusually scathing critic of conservative Muslims. His frequent attacks on Al-Azhar, where he was a law student, led the university to expel him in March, then push prosecutors to bring him to trial.

The judge said Nabil insulted the Prophet Muhammad with a piece he wrote in 2005 after riots in which angry Muslim worshippers attacked a Coptic Christian church over a play deemed offensive to Islam.

• In a later essay not cited by the court, Nabil clarified his comments, saying Muhammad was "great" but that his teachings on warfare and other issues should be viewed as a product of their times.

From AP story in the Washington Post, 2/22/07, by Nadia Abou El-Magd

Have a nice day.

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