by Noha Atef Global Voices Advocacy December 03, 2008
Egyptian cyberactivists are gathering for a conference being held in Cairo tomorrow (December 4), to call for the release of young Egyptian blogger Mohamed Adel.
The event, at the Press Syndicate, is being organized by the syndicate's Freedoms Committee, and is expected to attract a number of bloggers, political activists and public figures.
In the meantime, and according to some of Adel's friend, the young blogger went on a hunger strike since his arrest more than 10 days ago.
A source in the Muslim Brotherhood told the blogger, Abdel-Monem Mahmoud , that Adel is being detained because of a photo of him with a leader in Hamas movement. The photo was taken in Gaza last January when Adel was participating in a humanitarian caravan to the Gaza Strip. Monem added that his MB source said:
The arrest of Mohamed Adel came in the background of detaining his friend Abdel Aziz Megahed, who is a MB member student activist. Megahed was arrested at the beginning of November, and the State Security investigation confiscated his laptop, on which they found a photo of the two MB members and one of Hamas leaders. The same MB source told Moniem, that he was informed that the two arrested youngsters were tortured in the State Security headquarters in Nasr City, Cairo.
Meanwhile, blogger Mohamed Khairi, is being held in a military camp. It is known that those who are held in these camps are considered to have been forcibly kidnapped for they are held without a formal order from the prosecutor and not allowed visits, because their detention is illegal and in an illegal detention center.
Khairi was first arrested on October 22nd, 2008, and released on November 4th, 2008. Before his release, state security forces ordered him to close his blog and stop writing, but he didn't comply with the order. This time state security arrested him on November 16th, 12 days after his initial release. Once again the prosecutor ordered his release, but state security forces took him to a military camp, where he is being held.
The Arabic Network for Human Rights, expressed its concerns regarding that, warning that the detained blogger could be subjected to torture:
That security forces are once again utilizing military camps for holding political opponents and activists. These military camps do not come under the jurisdiction of either the prosecutor general, nor of any other civil department, and were widely used to hold Islamic extremists in the nineties, where torture was practiced free from judicial scrutiny.
http://advocacy.globalvoicesonline.org/2008/12/03/egypt-conference-to-call-f or-blogger-release-another-held-in-a-military-camp/
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