By AFP
CAIRO: Amnesty International demanded on Thursday that Egypt free a blogger who has completed a four-year jail term after being convicted for insulting the country’s president and Islam.
Abdel Kareem Nabil, known by his blogging name of Kareem Amer, should have been released from prison on Nov. 5 and had allegedly been beaten in a detention center, the London-based rights group said in a statement.
“Amer has already served his sentence of four years, which in itself was handed down for actions that amounted to no more than exercising his right to freedom of expression, and yet he remains detained,” Amnesty said.
Egypt’s government should “immediately release” the blogger and “investigate allegations of beatings and other ill-treatment,” it added.
Amer was convicted in 2007 of insulting the country’s president, Hosni Mubarak, and Islam.
Limited reforms have opened the space for the opposition, independent media and protest movements in Egypt, but police still routinely arrest opposition activists and journalists have complained of government interference.
And with two weeks left until a parliamentary election, rights groups say the government is cracking down on the media after it shut down more than a dozen satellite television stations.
The government says the stations were taken off the air because they advocated religious intolerance and quack medicine, and will be allowed to broadcast if they revise their programming.
