CAIRO: An Egyptian blogger being tried in a military court has seen the case postponed again, this time until March 7. The Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI) said they are attempting to convince the court to allow their lawyers – the blogger, 20-year-old Ahmed Mostafa's defense team – to review the case documents. ANHRI's legal counsel, Hamdi al-Assiuty, submitted a deferral request to the court, which was accepted, however the demand to see case documents against the blogger have been refused. The media freedom advocate group based in Cairo said this is “wasting the right of legal defense.” Another ANHRI lawyer, Mohamed Mahmoud, said of the deliberations: “We are subjected to strict and unreasonable security measures as well as the court insisting on the presence of assigned defense, [even] though we are Ahmed's official defense. Ahmed has stated that fact to the court … many times, but they would not listen.” On February 25, Mostafa was summoned to the military prosecutions office in the governorate of Kafr el-Sheikh in the northern Delta region after he had been phone and learned that a communique had been filed against him by the military academy accusing him of “publishing false information on his blog a year ago, on February 15, 2009,†ANHRI said in a press statement. The military prosecutor then, apparently conducted a swift investigation. Upon completing his investigation, he decided to put Mostafa in detention pending further findings. The case was closed on February 28, and then transfered to a military court for a quick trial. The verdict was supposed to be handed down on Monday, but was pushed back a day for further deliberations. ANHRI says the young man’s lawyers have been denied accesss to investigation documents “though he only practiced permissible criticism of an alleged incident on his blog.†“We are shocked and extremely frustrated of the incident as a whole,†ANHRI said in a press statement issued Monday morning ahead of the original trial date. “We are heading towards a military trial of a young civilian because of an article he wrote on his blog a year ago. Apart from the unfairness of the trial in principle, the incident manifests the Egyptian officials’ lies about using emergency laws against bloggers. In essence, currently there are two detained bloggers, Mossad Abu Fajr and Hani Nazeer, in one prison, Borg AlArab’s.†ANHRI added that “it seems that the Egyptian government has decided to drive the war against bloggers up to the climax of unfair military trials.†BM
