Blogger Kareem Amer is Free!!!

Great News from the Free Kareem Website and confirmed by Reuters!

Kareem Amer, whose real name was Abdel Kareem Nabil was set free Monday 15th of November 2010, after spending 1470 days in prison.

The Egyptian blogger who was held in prison for his writings has finally been released after serving over four years in prison, held longer than his original sentence. Kareem's crime was insulting Islam and President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt. There is virtually no freedom of speech in Egypt and almost anything can be construed as a violation of their restrictive laws.

Reports coming out of Egypt from friends said that Kareem was in bad health and had been badly beaten by security officers immediately before his release on Tuesday.

A student at the state-run religious al-Azhar University, Amer was arrested in 2006 on charges of insulting Islam and the Egyptian President in his blog posts. He was immediately expelled from the university and then was sentenced to four years in prison.

"Kareem was released on Tuesday morning and his health is bad but he is safe now," Gamal Eid, head of ANHRI, a middle eastern human rights group.

"He was detained for 11 days beyond his court sentence and beaten by officers who did not give any reasons," Eid added.

The first blogger to face trial in Egypt for online content, Kareem's arrest and conviction were thought to be done as a warning to other Egyptian students and bloggers to keep silent about the abuse of women in Egypt.

A large number of bloggers throughout the world, including The Metaverse, had united to protest Amer's arrest and lobby for his release. For the last for years protests and demonstrations have taken place in front of various Egyptian embassies.