Maikel Nabil, the Egyptian blogger and activist arrested late last month has been sentenced to 3 years in prison by a military tribunal for ‘insulting the military’. According to Human Rights Watch (HRW), Ismail Etman, head of the military government’s Morale Affairs Directorate, said that Nabil had defamed the military and that his opposition to military conscription would have a ‘negative effect on Egypt’s youth’.
“Maikel Nabil’s three-year sentence may be the worst strike against free expression in Egypt since the Mubarak government jailed the first blogger for four years in 2007,” said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “The sentence is not only severe, but it was imposed by a military tribunal after an unfair trial.”
Nabil, 25, maintained an Arabic-language blog maikelnabil.com and was active on micro-blogging site Twitter until the day of his arrest. While it is unclear which of his many blog posts led to his arrest, he was critical of many aspects of the interim military government that was installed in the wake of Hosni Mubarak’s ouster on February 11th. According to a machine translation, in one blog post Nabil says that while the revolution has gotten rid of the dictator (Mubarak), it has not yet gotten rid of the dictatorship and that the military had deceived the people. The post contains numerous pictures and links to documents he claims proves his case.
Nabil’s sentence follows large protests on April 1st (“Save the Revolution”) and 8th (“Friday of Cleansing”) calling on the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces to speed up the reform process. The military has promised to hand over power to a civilian government as soon as elections are held later this year.
By Angela Meadon
