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WORLD
Blogger gets 4-year prison sentence for posted writings
An Egyptian court recently sentenced an anti-government Internet blogger to a 4-year prison term in a landmark case that has sent shockwaves through the country’s growing community of online dissidents.
The case against Kareem Amer, 23, a former student at the Islamic institute of al-Azhar, was Egypt’s first prosecution of a blogger specifically for online writings; other bloggers had been detained for their offline political activities.
Amer received three years in prison on charges of contempt of religion and an additional year for defaming U.S.-allied President Hosni Mubarak.
“He’s only 23 years old. This verdict will ruin his future,” said Mohamed el Sharkawy, another blogger and opposition figure who was arrested and allegedly tortured in a crackdown on dissidents last year. “Security officials tailor-made this charge to shove bloggers and activists into jail. This means that the state cannot tolerate anyone voicing his opinion.”
While human rights groups denounced Amer’s sentence as further evidence of Mubarak’s authoritarian regime backsliding on promised changes, the blogger’s postings about Islam were so inflammatory that even some of the most fervent free-speech advocates couldn’t bring themselves to support him. As a result, the case not only set a precedent for prosecuting bloggers, but also forced debate on the limits of religious and political expression in conservative Egypt.
“The bloggers are having deep disputes over whether to support this guy or not,” said Tarek Mounir of the Cairo office of Reporters Without Borders, a press freedom watchdog group.
“The bloggers here are like the political horizon. Some of them are Islamists.”
For two years, Amer lashed out at government and religious institutions, taking particular aim at his own school, al-Azhar, one of the bastions of Sunni Muslim thought. He accused al-Azhar clerics of advocating terrorism, stifling progress and shilling for Mubarak’s government.
According to a report by Amnesty International, Amer was detained briefly in October 2005 for tarnishing Islam in his writings about sectarian clashes between Muslims and Coptic Christians. Shortly after that, he was expelled from al-Azhar for blasphemy. He has been in jail on the latest charges since November 2006.
NATIONAL
Cheney OK after Afghan suicide bombing by Taliban
After getting a taste of the terrorism that threatens the Afghan government, Vice President Dick Cheney, attempting to give assurances that the United States will stand by Afghanistan, insisted that political leaders in the United States calling for a withdrawal of military forces from Iraq will leave countries in this part of the world vulnerable to dangerous “consequences.”
The vice president – who became the most senior member of the Bush administration to spend the night in a war zone after poor weather delayed his trip into Kabul – also came up against some of the violence that threatens the young government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai. At least 23 people died and many more were wounded when a suicide bomber attacked the main gate of Bagram Air Force Base on the morning that Cheney awoke at the vast air base nestled in the mountains.
At the time of the attack, for which the Taliban claimed credit, the vice president was secure and well inside the base, far from the bombing that sent a plume of smoke rising beyond the flight line where his military cargo jet was parked preparing for takeoff for Kabul. As the base called a Code Red, Cheney was moved “for a brief moment” from the room where he was staying, he said, but was returned to his room after the situation “settled down.”
The broader meaning of the attack, Cheney said hours later, is that insurgents are pressing for ways to challenge the authority of the Karzai government. Talk of withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq only emboldens terrorists operating here and in Pakistan, where he had traveled the day before, he continued.
“I think they clearly try to find ways to question the authority of the central government,” Cheney said during a brief interview in a luxury-cabin mounted inside the cargo bay of the C-17 military transport, dubbed “The Spirit of Strom Thurmond,” that had carried him in to Pakistan and Afghanistan and out again.
Terrorists in the region are intent on testing the resolve of the U.S. in Iraq, the Bush administration maintains. And “the continuing threat that exists in this part of the world” is part of the reason that President Bush dispatched the vice president to Pakistan and Afghanistan on Tuesday, according to a senior administration official interviewed near the end of a trip that was supposed to be completed in one day but turned into a two-day affair because of weather in Afghanistan.
LOCAL / BSU
Idaho inmates injured in weather-related van rollover
Seven inmates from the South Idaho Correctional Institution Community Work Center were injured when their van rolled on Pleasant Valley Road. An ambulance took one of the inmates to the hospital for treatment of rib injuries. The other six were evaluated for minor injuries.
The apparently weather-related accident happened at about 6 a.m. when the van slid sideways while going around a corner. The van rolled once and landed back on its wheels.
The accident happened near the gravel pit where Pleasant Valley Road curves south of Boise.
All the inmates were wearing seatbelts.
Courtesy Idaho Press-Tribune
WHAT THE ?
Hope you’re not mad at me
When a San Rafael, Calif., man wrecked his wife’s new car, he was so afraid that she would hit the roof that he told her that he had been kidnapped.
He said that two men held him at gunpoint and he had to crash the car to escape. His story fell apart under police questioning.
MCT Campus Services
