I17 April 2007
Blogger arrested and held for reporting on torture of detainees
SOURCE: Reporters sans frontières (RSF), Paris
**Updates IFEX alert of 16 April 2007; please note that in the previous
alert, the journalist’s name was spelled “Mahmoud”**
(RSF/IFEX) – Voicing concern about increasingly repressive policies towards
online dissent, Reporters Without Borders has called for the release of
blogger Abdul-Moneim Mahmud, who was arrested on 14 April 2007 at Cairo
airport. He has been charged with membership of an “illegal organisation”
(the Muslim Brotherhood), but his arrest seems to be linked to the photos
and reports about the torture of detainees that he has posted online.


“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 (
http://www.ana-ikhwan.blogspot.com ), and on the Muslim Brotherhood’s
website ( http://www.ikhwanweb.info ).
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 contributor to 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 ( http://www.karam903.blogspot.com ), 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”:
http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=19603
For further information, contact Julien Pain, RSF Internet Desk, 5, rue
Geoffroy Marie, Paris 75009, France, tel: +33 1 44 83 84 71, fax: +33 1 45
23 11 51, e-mail: internet@rsf.org, Internet: http://www.internet.rsf.org