CAIRO: The Court of Appeal has upheld a December 2008 ruling acquitting two bloggers and the director of a human rights organization of libel and defamation of Alexandria Judge Abdel Fattah Murad. Since 2007, Murad has pursued efforts to block human rights websites that published allegations of copyright violations against one of his books. In April 2007 Judge Murad accused Gamal Eid, executive of the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI), and Egyptian bloggers Manal Bahy Eddin Hassan and Alaa Seif El-Islam of libel and defamation. Murad claimed that he was defamed during a courtroom hearing pertaining to a lawsuit that he filed that attempted to block 51 websites. The websites in question published accusations that Murad had plagiarized from an ANHRI human rights report. The websites run by Eid, Hassan, and Seif El-Islam were among the websites targeted by Murad's lawsuit. Murad first sued to block the websites in February 2007. He claimed that the websites threatened national security and insulted President Hosni Mubarak. The Administrative Court ruled against Murad in December 2007, citing Article 47 of the Egyptian Constitution that "freedom of expression is sacred. Murad's appeal to the Supreme Administrative Court over the website-blocking case was recently postponed to July 4, 2009. Murad launched the defamation lawsuit while the website case was still in court On Dec. 31, 2008 the Dokki Court of Misdemeanors ruled in favor of Eid, Seif El-Islam, and Hassan. Murad then appealed to the Court of Appeals, resulting in the June 29 ruling. A June 29 press release issued by ANHRI hailed the Court of Appeals decision, and criticized "the unashamed making up and malicious lies swamping the case. The press release also stated that ANHRI's official complaint to state prosecutors regarding the alleged copyright infringement, filed two years ago, has been ignored because of Murad's relationship to the judiciary.
