By Sarah Carr
CAIRO: “If I could turn back time I would do exactly what I did. I don’t regret anything,” Kareem Amer said, just over a week after he was released from a 4-year prison sentence.
Abdel-Kareem Nabil (known for his pen name Kareem Amer), the first blogger to be imprisoned in Egypt for charges directly related to his writings, remained defiant despite his experiences in prison — much of which he spent in solitary confinement and during which he was physically assaulted four times — and despite some of his ideas having now “changed”.
“Just because some ideas have changed now, that doesn’t mean that I regret that at one point in the past I thought like this. It’s natural that people go through stages and their thoughts change.”
In March 2006 Amer was summoned to an internal disciplinary committee at the Islamic Al-Azhar University-affiliated college in which he studied.
“They questioned me about things they have no power over, activities outside the college. I was not involved in any political activity inside the college,” Amer said.
“I shouldn’t be condemned for writing. I expressed my opinion.”
Life at home was “difficult,” Amer said, as his family espoused a conservative Salafi version of Islam. “I might have been able to handle home life on its own but my family sent me to an Al-Azhar school from day one”.
In an attempt to escape the “intense pressure, both at home and at school” Amer began reading books by people “who would be considered infidels” by hi family and at school, starting with books on women’s rights by authors such as Nawal El-Saadawy.
Amer was expelled from the college in 2006 after he wrote a post on his blog about Islam and Al-Azhar that the University objected to. The case was referred to the public prosecution office, which began investigations eight months later in October 2006.
Amer wrote the blogpost in question after sectarian clashes in the Moharram Bek area of Alexandria in which he lives.
Lawyer Rawda Ahmed said that public prosecution office investigations were conducted in a “group fashion” in a shared office, and that district attorneys not assigned to the case interrupted as Amer was questioned, making comments such as “some things should not be blogged about”.
Ahmed herself was taken to one side and questioned about her own views regarding what Amer wrote and how she could consider representing him. One judge examining the renewal of Amer’s remand during the course of investigations told the blogger, “we could let you go but then a black car might take you and you’ll never be heard from again”.
A four-year prison sentence was handed down after the blogger was found guilty of defaming religion and insulting the president of the republic in February 2007.
Amer was subjected to his first physical assault when guards taking him from prison to the courthouse attacked him. “I don’t really want to talk about the details because it’s a bit painful, but I was hit and cursed at”.
He was again physically assaulted during appeal proceedings in March 2007 by the officer in charge of investigations at the Alexandria Court Complex who, Amer says, “was trying to force me to smile while he took a photograph of me with his mobile phone. I don’t know why”.
Once transferred to prison, Amer was kept in a solitary confinement cell on the punishment wing for 65 days, and only allowed out twice to see lawyers. He was only moved to a political prisoners wing after a prison inspection by the public prosecution office.
Amer alleged that he was physically assaulted by three men after Medhat Samir, a prison investigations officer at Borg El-Arab, heard a rumor that Amer was encouraging other prisoners to launch a hunger strike. Amer suffered broken teeth and contusions after the assault but was himself charged with starting a fight and one month added to his prison sentence. The charges were later quashed on appeal.
Visits to Amer were gradually restricted from June 2008. His last visit was on Oct. 4, 2009. Head of the Arab Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI) Gamal Eid links this to a United Nations rights body recognizing the blogger as a prisoner of conscience.
“Immediately after the decision was published we were banned from visiting [Amer] and told by state security investigations officers who control Borg El-Arab prison, ‘let the United Nations and the public prosecution office [help you]’”, Eid told reporters during the press conference held at ANHRI headquarters on Wednesday.
Amer described how he discovered that a freelance journalist, Magdy Samaan [a freelance journalist contributing to this paper], had attempted to visit him and been refused.
“By chance I was looking at the wing logbook in which they write down everything that happens and I saw that they had written that I refused a visit by Magdy Samaan. This if forgery of official documents,” Amer told reporters.
Describing his day to day life in prison, Amer said that the majority of prisoners he was imprisoned with were serving criminal sentences and that it was “hard to live with them in everyday life, never mind inside prison. I didn’t get into conversations with them.”
The fact that he was isolated from other prisoners was “good,” but prison authorities did it “because they thought I would negatively influence other prisoners’ thoughts.”
Segregated from other prisoners, Amer spent a lot of time reading, but noted that the prisoners were not allowed to use the library.
“It’s just décor for official visits from the National Council for Human Rights or the media.”
Amer said that prisoners are only allowed to watch terrestrial television channels. Being forced to watch certain programs for news about world events because of a lack of alternatives, Amer joked, “was like a form of torture.” Asked which programs, he replied, “El-Beit Beitak” a talk show formerly aired on Egypt’s Channel 1.
After the expiration of his prison sentence, Amer was moved to the Alexandria Security Directorate where he was detained without charge. He was eventually released on Nov. 16 2010, which coincided with the Eid holidays.
During this period he was blindfolded and taken into a room with two officers who he could tell “from their voices” were young men. He was made to stand for two hours while they verbally insulted him and made threats against his family and threatened him with torture. Amer said he was slapped twice on the face.
Amer is currently living with his family in Alexandria, and rejected press allegations that his father had disowned him. As for the future, Amer says that he plans to resume his studies.
“Al-Azhar education is in itself a life sentence because its qualifications are not recognized in other schools. I can’t go to any other university other than Al-Azhar because I have an Al-Azhar secondary school certificate.”
Asked whether he would consider returning to Al-Azhar, Amer laughed saying, “even if they asked me to go back, there’s no way I would.”
