3 Egyptian Bloggers Detained

3 Egyptian Bloggers Detained

Bloggers Alaa and Manal, and human rights lawyer, Gamal Eid, the manager of the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information, appeared before Imababa prosecution and they are currently interrogated on charges of insulting and defaming judge Abdul Fattah Morad .
 
Abdul Fattah Morad filed a lawsuit against the government demanding it to shut down 21 human rights web sites and weblogs which revealed recent incidents of torturing citizens in police stations and campaigning against the Interior Ministry”s thugs, and the police state, in addition to posting complaints of citizens and rehabilitating violence victims .
 
It all started when Abdul Fattah Morad published a book about weblogs and warned against violating copyrights although he copied to it more than 50 pages from the report of the Arab Network for Human Rights.
 
Instead of acknowledging that he copied from these weblogs, the judge turned the table against bloggers and filed a lawsuit against them .
 
The Internet police summoned also Amr Gharbeia, the blogger of
http://gharbeia.net/node/ar,  by phone but he refused to appear before the prosecution without an official warrant.
 
This is the
first time in which the Internet police summons bloggers; this comes as part of a full escalation launched by the Egyptian regime against the Egyptian opposition after approving the constitutional amendments that gives the police more powers that violates privacies and freedoms of citizens.


Update: They are being moved now to the Giza secuirty department, and hopefully they will be released there! 



Updating Published by Hossam el-Hamalawy:





Judge Abdel Fattah Mourad, who is crusading for the closure of 21 blogs and websites, has filed a new lawsuit against Bloggers Alaa Seif, his wife Manal Hassan, and lawyer Gamal Eid, the director of HR-Info. The judge is accusing the three of libel during the last court session, where actually the judge assaulted blogger Rami Siyam who video-recorded him with a mobile phone.


The Giza Prosecutor interrogated the three today, then ordered their transfer to the Dokki Police Station, from where they should be released, pending investigation.


Read the following postings by Nora Younis, Malek Mustafa and the SandMonkey for more details…