Justice Minister Mamdouh Marei has decided on Sunday to refer Judge Hamdi Wafiq of Damietta to a disciplinary court, on charges of “insulting the president.”
The judge is to stand trial on 17 March. If indicted, he could expelled from the judicial body.
UPDATE: Mubarak intervened personally to ask the minister to withdraw the case against the judge, Al-Masry Al-Youm reports.
I received the following message from blogger ِAmr Gharbeia:
Rumors have been reaching me for days now, and I received confirmation only today from lawyer Gamal Eid, executive manager of Arabic Network for Human Rights Information.
It seems that Judge Abdel Fattah Morad, head of Alexandria Appeal Court, has started a lawsuit against the government in Egypt’s Administrative Courts in order to block a number of Egyptian websites. The list, 21-websites-long, includes the blogs and sites that took part in the discussion around the book the Judge has written, and the wide plagiarism evident in the book copying HRInfo’s report on Internet Freedoms in the Arab World, and a how-to-blog guide written by blogger Bent Masreya.
Of the 21 blogs and website, I was able so far to confirm Kifaya’s and HRInfo’s websites, in addition to the blogs of Bent Masreya, Yehia Megahed, and my own.
UPDATE: More details from Amr:
The lawsuit is started by Abdel Fattah Murad, one of Egypt’s most senior judges–and head of the Alexandria Appeal Court, where imprisoned blogger Abdul Kareem Nabil Soliman’s case is heard next week.
The judge is a self-claimed authority in internet issues. I was excited by the fact that he started a blog a while ago, and wrote him asking if he would mind me writing a review for a book he published recently on “the scientific and legal foundations of blogs”. He did not mind, until I published the thing. He obviously has copied tens of pages from the recent report by the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information on Internet freedoms in the Arab world. I noticed this only because some of the figures and estimations were taken from an interview with me. He did this without citation, except for one link to in the endnotes, while putting footnotes to other books he wrote on text that he has not written.
Three things prove it is not a mistake: 1) he copied at least two other bloggers with no referencing at all; 2) he changed parts in the text copied from the report to mean the opposite, for example to indicate that Tunisia is a nice, liberal and progressive country; and 3) he published at the front and back pages of his book several warnings against plagiarism, and referred to laws, religions and scientific research methods. He does not allow anyone to cite anything more than two lines from his writings, and in the book he warns against bloggers who violate copyrights, associates them with international terrorism and other things, and claims he has written a reference on scientific methodology. To top it all, he annexes ready-to-fill complaint forms against bloggers who publish pornography (fitting someone’s head over a naked body, an imaginary case with no history in Egypt’s blogs) and publicizing news that could tarnish the country’s reputation.
I do not really care much for copy rights, and think they are over-rated and keep knowledge, medicine, and soon genetically-engineered food from the world’s poorest, and I would not have written anything if this was another blogger, or a journalist, or even a university professor. What worries me, however, is that this is a judge whose ruling cannot be appealed. He can silence, imprison or execute people, and he oversees our elections.
Once the blogs are found offensive by the court, then in light of the Egyptian’s regime reputation, it is automatic to prosecute the bloggers. This is an early warning. We are still gathering information, and HRInfo should be making a release and starting procedure Saturday next.
I attended on Wednesday the circus trial of the alleged Egyptian Canadian spy Muhammad el-Attar.
The court building was under tight siege by Mubarak’s Central Security Forces, as the trial of the Muslim Brotherhood leaders was in process, on the ground floor. The troops restricted access of families and the group’s supporters into the building, as the verdict was expected to out. And it was a rotten verdict. The judge rejected the appeal of Khairat el-Shatter and his colleagues to lift the govt’s freeze on their funds.
Khaled Salam, the editor of Ikhwan Web reminds us that the judge in that MB case, is the same Judge who sent Dr. Ayman Nour and Dr. Saad Eddin Ibrahim to prison.
And more news are trickling from the Tora gulag on the appalling prison conditions the Brothers are kept under:
The Muslim Brotherhood detainees in the southern Cairo prison of Tura (28 detainees) are facing harsh and poor treatment by prison administration which succumbs to the pressures of the State Security Police Service. Detainees are kept in their prison cells for 23 hours every day and get only one hour break outdoors. At least six individuals are kept in 2×3 meters prison cells. Moreover, detainees were prevented from performing the Friday Prayer during the last two weeks
As for the unsanitary conditions that these political detainees face, their cells lack toilets. Available toilets are shared by other inmates and have no doors!
On Wednesday, a small group of journalists and detainees’ relatives held a vigil in front of the Press Syndicate, denouncing the trial of civilians in military courts, and demanding the release of MB journalist Ahmad Ezzedin.
On the previous day (Tuesday), tens of doctors held a silent protest in front of Dar el-Hekma (Doctor’s Syndicate) in downtown Cairo, demanding the release of 22 of their colleagues, who were detained in Mubarak’s ongoing crackdown on the Brotherhood.