Egyptian Blogger Sentenced to Four Years in Prison

Kareem Amer, the 22-year-old former university student, was sentenced to four years in prison today for his blog writing. Three years of the sentence were for the crime of insulting Islam and Mohammed, and for inciting sectarian strife. The fourth year of the sentence was for insulting Egyptian President Hosni Mubarek.

In his writings, Amer had frequently been a detractor of Al-Azhar, the most prominent Sunni religious center. He called it "the university of terrorism" and accused it of encouraging extremism. In addition, Amer was a secularist and his views often clashed with more hard-line Muslims regarding the place of women in society.

Wael Abbas, a fellow Egyptian blogger said he was "shocked," at the outcome of the trial. "This is a terrible message to anyone who intends to express his opinion and to bloggers in particular."

Alaa Abdel-Fattah is another Egyptian blogger. Like Amer, he was swept up in a wave of arrests last November. Unlike Amer, however, Abdel-Fattah was released after 6 weeks in custody. He felt the conviction would "have a chilling effect on the rest of the bloggers," especially the conviction for insulting the President of Egypt. "We are enduring oppression, poverty and torture," he said. "So the least we can do is insult the president."

Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and Reporters Without borders (a press rights watchgroup based in France), had recently joined the fray. According to Amnesty International, Kareem Amer was a "prisoner of conscience," and warned the this ruling could hurt freedom of expression in a country that has been one of the United States' top allies in the always-turbulent Middle East.

According to the judge, Amer insulted Mohammed in a piece written in 2005. This was after Muslims attacked a Christian Church, after the church put on a play the Muslims had deemed offensive to Islam.