CAIRO: Jailed Egyptian blogger Maikel Nabil Sanad told his court appointed lawyer to be quiet. He would have nothing to do with a trial he felt was illegitimate. According to sources close to the case, the young blogger, currently into his third month of a hunger strike, had his retrial postponed, yet again, until November 13. Four witnesses have been called to testify at the next session, court sources said. Nabil, who has been on a prison hunger strike since August 23, refuses to acquiesce to military investigators and the controversial military tribunal, which last month called for a retrial of the blogger, sparking widespread outrage among his supporters. Late last month, he was sent to a psychiatric hospital, after he refused to eat and his health deteriorated. Doctors and observers said it was a move by the government to distance themselves from the potential death that looms for the young blogger, considered by many to be the first prisoner of conscious since the ousting of former President Hosni Mubarak on February 11. Basma Abdel Aziz, the director of the media department for Egypt's General Secretariat for Mental Health condemned the move regarding Nabil's case, stating, “the previous regime used to accuse mentally healthy individuals of being mentally disturbed and accuse them of crimes of conscience despite professional reports stating their sanity. “The incarceration of an individual whose charge is having a different view of the situation in the country is morally and professionally unacceptable. Sanad is kept in one ward with others accused of criminal charges, a matter that is involves terrorizing and threat,” the Abdel Aziz continued. It went on to condemn the politicization of mental hospital spaces to isolate and ridicule political opponents. He has since been returned to his prison cell, sources told Bikyamasr.com. Nabil was sentenced to a three-year jail term for insulting the Egyptian military on his blog “Son of Ra,” in a blog post published last March entitled, “The people and the military were never one hand.” Nabil, a Coptic Christian, holds controversial political views. As such, he has received little attention from the activist and pro-rights community in Egypt. The blogger supports Egyptian normalization with Israel, causing him to receive harsh criticism. He came under fire when he evaded military conscription in 2010 on the grounds that he is a pacifist and sympathetic to Israeli troops. “I don't want to point a weapon at a young Israeli, recruited into obligatory service, defending his state's right to exist. I think obligatory service is a form of slavery,” he wrote in a blog post then. Human rights groups and activists have called for the immediate release of the blogger, stating that he is a prisoner of conscience, unduly held. BM
