CAIRO: The leader of Sweden's “Pirate Party”, Anna Troberg, and a group of Swedish-based activists and bloggers, have called on the Egyptian government to release activists and bloggers, Maikel Nabil and Alaa Abdel Fattah, for their imprisonment for speaking out against the government. “The civil journalism found on the Internet forms an integral engine for developing democracy in many countries. With blogs and other social media as their tools, they expose injustice and misconduct in the society, even when the media landscape is being completely controlled,” blogged Troberg on Thursday. “Freedom of speech and thought must be respected, and all bloggers that are being imprisoned because of their opinions must be freed immediately,” concluded the bloggers' petition. Troberg is the leader of the Pirate Party in Sweden, which advocates the right to privacy, both on the Internet and in everyday life, and also calls for political transparency. Maikel Nabil Sanad, who has been on a hunger strike since August 23, was sentenced to three years in prison for insulting Egypt's interim government, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), on his blog last March. Nabil's retrial has been met with a series of postponements, with the most recent one being handed down last week. The trial is set to resume on Sunday December 4. Abdel Fattah has been detained since October 31 when SCAF called him in for questioning pertaining to his involvement in the October 9 Coptic Christian Maspero protest, in which a vicious military crackdown on protesters left 27 dead and nearly 300 wounded. Egypt's military council has charged the blogger with “intent of committing crimes, assaulting security personnel and using force against them.” In addition, the list of charges also includes “stealing weapons, possession of an illegal and unlicensed firearm and vandalizing public property purposefully to execute a terrorist act.” Abdel Fattah defiantly refused to stand testimony in front of the court on the day of his initial summoning, denying the authority of Egypt's controversial military courts and refusing to acknowledge the fabricated charges against him. BM
