Egypt: Blogger Gets 3 Years for Criticising Military
April 11th, 2011The U.S. is the master of meet the new boss, same as the old boss, so watch as “democracy” goes on to be basically Mubarak by other means.
—Egypt Protests: America’s Secret Backing for Rebel Leaders Behind Uprising?
It’s the new, NEW freedom.
Via: AFP:
A military court has jailed a blogger for three years for criticising the armed forces that have ruled Egypt since president Hosni Mubarak’s ouster in February, in a decision slammed by rights groups on Monday.
“Regrettably, the Nasr City military court sentenced Maikel Nabil to three years in prison,” the blogger’s lawyer Gamal Eid told AFP.
“The lawyers were not present, the verdict was handed out almost in secret.”
The decision had initially been set for Wednesday and was postponed to Sunday. The lawyers went on Sunday but were told to leave because there would be no verdict, Eid said.
“We were then very surprised to hear that he (Nabil) was sentenced to three years,” said Eid, who heads the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI).
The verdict is likely to cause concern among Egypt’s large network of bloggers who had hoped Mubarak’s overthrow in a popular uprising would usher in a new era of freedom of expression.
Reporters Without Borders condemned the ruling, saying Nabil had become “the new government’s first prisoner of conscience.”
“The methods used by the Egyptian military do not seem to have evolved since Hosni Mubarak’s fall,” the group’s secretary general Jean-Francois Julliard said.
“They show the degree to which the military still cannot be criticised and are still a taboo subject. A civilian should not be tried by a military court,” he said.
“Egypt has begun a process of democratisation and it should now be possible to criticise the armed forces like any other component of the state,” Julliard said.
