An Alexandria court convicted an Egyptian blogger on Thursday for insulting both *religions* and the Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and sentenced him to four years in jail over his writings on the Internet.I guess Egypt is the only country in the whole world that has a law against insulting religions, as well as insulting its president. The future of the Egyptian blogosphere is really foggy now, especially for those political blogs.
Abdel Karim Suleiman, a 22-year-old former law student who has been in custody since November, was the first blogger to stand trial in Egypt for his Internet writings. He was convicted in connection with eight articles he wrote since 2004.
Source: Reuters, India.
Tags: Egypt, Blogging, Gr33n Data
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ReplyDeleteit's nice to know that religion and the president are treated equally in the law, that just proves we are a modern secular state doesn't it?
ReplyDelete@Alaa, you are right, but you know insulting religion costed him 3 years in jail, while insulting the president costed him only one year :)
ReplyDelete"it's nice to know that religion and the president are treated equally in the law" funny:). Tarek, I read somewhere that it's one year for each religion...so maybe Alaa has a point.
ReplyDeleteThis is really awful but I think that in a way it brings attention to the situation...maybe this will mean something will be done?
ReplyDeleteAlso...I tagged you.
la2 7a2e2i 7'eer :S
ReplyDeleteI wasn't sure b4 that they can seriously take such an action...i thought that it was nothing more than some threatening words 4 people to stop or even take care.
Tarek! you and all your Arab vistors as well as non-Arabs who are sympathetic with Arabs have been tagged
ReplyDeleteThis is what irritates me about people in the US who scream about being silenced - "HEY I'M BEING SILENCED OVER HERE!" They have no clue what being silenced would really be like.
ReplyDelete