CAIRO - Military prosecutors Saturday received complaints from residents in the vicinity of the Military Judicial Authority (MJA) in Nasr City about potential presidential candidate Ayman Nour and renowned female blogger Asmaa Mahfouz, accusing them of insulting the military. The residents, most of them army officers and generals, who live in buildings near the MJA, said in their complaints that Nour and Mahfouz had used insulting words in describing the military. Nour and Mahfouz, who will now appear before the military prosecutors to answer these accusations, were accompanying the lawyer for cyberspace activist Michael Nabil, now on hunger strike in prison, when he went to the MJA last Tuesday to appeal the imprisonment of his client. Military tribunals have come under fire from many activists for targeting the opponents of the ruling military council, but still a large swathe of the population supports such tribunals, especially when they are used against thugs and criminals, a large number of whom are still at large after escaping from prison in the aftermath of the revolution. Political activists like Mahfouz herself say that Egyptians are in no need for any exceptional courts, because the country's civil laws and criminal code are more than enough for this. When Mahfouz goes to the MJA to answer these charges, it will be the second time for her to appear before military prosecutors; the first time, about two months ago, she was ordered to pay a fine of nearly $3,900 for instigating violence on Twitter. Nabil was also referred to a military tribunal for criticising Minister of Defence Mohamed Hussein Tantawi on his blog. Although his lawyer protested that somebody else had hacked into Nabil's blog and posted the comments, the activist was sentenced to three years in jail last April. Even with this, a military source told the Middle East News Agency that the military has deep respect for freedom of speech, provided that this freedom is practised without causing offence.
