Ahmed Maher Ibrahim

The Egyptian authorities have re-arrested Ahmed Maher, according to the Christian Science Monitor, as well as 14 others involved in the “Facebook protest.”

Last week, police arrested more than a dozen “Facebook activists,” including Ahmed Maher, who used the social networking site to help publicize the strike, drawing more than 60,000 people to a Facebook group in support.

Mr. Maher was originally arrested and tortured in May, shortly after a protest fizzled out, but he was released without charges. He has now been drawn again into Egypt’s labyrinthine justice system after speaking out to local and international media about his detention and torture at the hands of state security.

“State security officers call me on the phone and send me threatening messages on Facebook – it is a constant campaign,” Maher said before his arrest. “They say, ‘Last time was easy, next time it will be harder. Last time, we only threatened to rape you, but next time we actually will.”

Ah, Egypt, modern-day inheritors of the glories of the pharaohs.

Maher has been separated from the other Facebook detainees and held in the same prison that holds Kareem, the Burg el Arab.

I got 2300 messages from everywhere , i feel so happy everytime i am receiving a letter , i feel that people
didnt forget about me

Our Flood the Jail with Mail campaign was much more of a success than I anticipated, I confess.

Check out this post to find out how to write Kareem.

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Update: Full text of Kareem’s letter in English below. Arabic version also at FreeKareen.

I am living through some decent days here which I know will not last. I have several activists with me who were detained during the strike on the 6th of April in Egypt. They are people like me. They are educated, and staunch believers in certain values which they are fighting for.

Some of these people are out now, and the others are waiting to be released. Sometimes I wonder if the reason why they’re here in the first place is to make me more sad when they leave me alone in the dark.

This is the first time since I’ve been in prison that I meet people who are intellectually similar to me, but they will soon be released and I will be lonely again.

I wish I can get out of here. Every time I witness people being released from prison to go back to their homes, I wonder when it’s time for me to also leave. I never did anything worthy of this punishment. I’ve been here for so long, and throughout my detainment, I was never convinced that I ever committed a crime. Their punishment is not effective. This prison never changed my mind, and it never will.

I got 2,300 messages from all over the world. I feel ecstatic every time I receive a letter. I feel that people didn’t forget about me. Sometimes, the prisoners here mock me and try to hurt me by telling me that people forgot about my existence, but when I look at all of these letters that I have in my cell… I don’t care about what the prisoners are saying, because I have concrete evidence with me proving them wrong.

I just wish I could get out of here.

Kareem Amer
Borg el Arab prison, Section 22 Cell 1
Alexandria, Egypt

Ahmed Maher Ibrahim, a 27-year-old civil engineer, used the social-networking site Facebook to support calls for a general strike on May 4, 2008, President Hosni Mubarak’s 80th birthday.   Officers from the Interior Ministry’s State Security Investigations (SSI) department apprehended him on a street in the suburb of New Cairo on May 7, blindfolded him and took him to a police station where they stripped him naked, and beat him intermittently for 12 hours before releasing him without charge.

Before the incident, Maher said, an SSI officer phoned him on April 25 to invite him “for a coffee” on the following day at SSI headquarters in Lazoghli, in downtown Cairo. Maher did not show up.

On May 4, it appeared that few Egyptians had heeded the call for a strike. On May 7, however, as Maher was driving in New Cairo at around 1 p.m., an unmarked van with non-official license plates pulled in front of him. Three other unmarked cars, also with non-official plates, surrounded the car and some 12 men in civilian clothes pulled him into the van, where they handcuffed and blindfolded him.

Maher told Human Rights Watch that the men took him first to the New Cairo police station. There, he was beaten and insulted by men he could not identify because he was blindfolded. Maher said that around the time of the afternoon prayers (4:30 p.m.), his captors took him to SSI headquarters at Lazoghli. There, they stripped him down to his underwear, threatened to rape him with a stick, and continued kicking, beating, and insulting him, and dragging him across the floor. The blows fell mostly on his back and his neck, he said, and he lost some hearing after a sharp blow to one ear. Maher said his assailants wore gloves and applied lotion to his back between beatings in an apparent attempt to reduce bruising.

According to Maher, the officers did not accuse him of anything, but asked for the password of the May 4 Facebook group that news reports said he had started. They also asked him about members of the group he had never met. The SSI officers released him before dawn on May 8 with the warning that he would be beaten more severely the next time State Security detained him.

In another incident a month earlier, Isra’a `Abd al-Fattah, 29, was among roughly 500 people arrested by police nationwide in connection with a call for a strike on April 6. (Most of those arrested were from the industrial Nile Delta city of Mahalla al-Kobra, where demonstrations against rising prices turned violent.) `Abd al-Fattah had also used a social network group on Facebook to publicize the April 6 strike, leading to her detention for more than two weeks. Prosecutors had ordered her release a few days after she was arrested when charges against her of “inciting unrest” were dismissed, but interior ministry officials kept her in detention until April 23.

I think even if we had 1 letter, it would be a success for us. We had around 60 confirmed letters from around the world, and we spoke with a few campuses in the USA and they are getting ready to hold small events where they collect letters for Kareem, so they can send them all together in a big envelope. We aim to collect at least 30 letters per event. We did the same thing at my college here and we managed to collect around 20 - postcards, letters, pictures. I think Kareem would like it to see things personalized. We are hoping that he will write back confirming to us that he received all these letters.

Ideally people would be sending letters throughout the year, so no amount of days is ever enough. We just specified a date because Curt rightly noted that people would just be saying things like “oh, I’d just send it next month, or the month after that,” and eventually forget. But if they think they have to send it within a specific date, then they will do it much quicker. We hope to be doing this a few times a year to make sure Kareem is being remembered and that people continue making an effort to communicate with him.

And here’s FreeKareem’s update post.

On Monday, April 21, was the official deadline for our letter campaign “Flood the Jail with Mail“. So far, we had about 60 confirmed letters from around the world, but we are assured that it’s not over - some people are getting ready to hold small events where they collect letters for Kareem, so they can send them all together in a big envelope. Our aim is to collect at least 30 letters per event.

People have sent Kareem letters, postcards, pictures, books, etc. We are hoping that he will write back confirming to us that he received all these letters, or at least most of them. But even if the campaign is over now you can continue writing to Kareem. He is always happy to receive letters from his friends and supporters.

We also have in mind to create another campaign of this sort during the end of the summer in August, and in between, we’d have other kinds of campaigns to keep people aware of Kareem. If anyone wants to help out, they should contact editor@freekareem.org and we’d be happy to accept any suggestions or help.

I’d like to sincerely thank all the CPB members who wrote Kareem. I’d also like to second Esra’a’s encouragement to go ahead and write, or write again, whether the campaign is at an end or not.

RSF now reports that Esraa Abdel Fattah Ahmed has also been released.

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From RSF:

Mahamed El Sharkawi, a blogger who was arrested on 5 April while distributing leaflets urging Cairo residents to go on strike in support of the 6 April protest against food price hikes, was released yesterday from a prison in the Cairo district of Marg where he had been on strike for the past four days. Sharkawi heads the Cairo-based publishing house Malameh, which was raided by a moral decency police unit on 16 April for publishing a comic book called “Metro” written in vernacular Arabic. Copies of the book were seized on the grounds that it harmed “public manners.”

Fellow blogger Esraa Abdel Fattah Ahmed, who launched the “6 April” group on the social networking website Facebook, is still detained although the prosecutor general ordered her release on 17 April. Her group had more than 65,000 members.

A third blogger, Kareem El Beheiri, who was one of the workers arrested during protests in Mahalla (north of Cairo) on 7 April, is also still held. Well-known because of his blog, he has been fired from his job in a Mahalla textile plant without any grounds being given.

In conjunction with FreeKareem.org, the Committee to Protect Bloggers is launching a mail campaign in support of imprisoned Egyptian blogger, Kareem Amer. (If you’re not familiar with the case of this unjustly-imprisoned blogger, please read FreeKareem’s FAQ.)

From today through April 21, both organizations are encouraging their memberships to go analogue and write Kareem a letter or postcard.

There are several reasons for this departure from the digital.

First, Kareem can receive physical mail. Second, a sufficient amount of such mail will remind Egyptian authorities that this blogger, bloggers in general and prisoners of conscience over all, are not alone. When Kareem was being tortured several months ago, the focus of international media was instrumental in stopping it. Finally, it takes us out of our comfort zones and reminds us that what we do exists in the physical world with real consequences.

Alexandria
Borg Al-Arab Prison
Room 1 Section 22
Prisoner Abdul Kareem Nabil Suleiman
The Arab Republic of Egypt
Kareem’s address in Arabic - mandatory to include on envelope

Upon sending a letter or card to Kareem, please let either the CPB or FreeKareem know you’ve done so, by commenting on one of the blogs, emailing us, or tagging a post about it with “floodthejail.”

Here’s all the information you’ll need to write Kareem from our site and here is FreeKareem’s write-up. (If you don’t write Arabic, don’t forget to print out and affix Kareem’s address in Arabic to anything you send him.)

Again, if you’re not very familiar with Kareem’s situation, you’ll want to read FreeKareem’s FAQ.

We’d like to ask you to do one more thing. When you send something to Kareem, drop a comment on one of the posts on CPB or on FreeKareem. Alternatively, post it on the CPB or FreeKareem Facebook walls or send either us or FreeKareem an email. That way, if there is a discrepancy between the number of letters sent and the number delivered, we’ll be able to document it. (We don’t anticipate this will happen, but better safe than sorry.)

Thanks to everyone for participating. Oh, and don’t forget to post a “Write to Kareem” badge on your site.

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Also: If you write about this campaign would you tag it “floodthejail“? Thanks.

Curt (that’s me), the director of the Committee, and Esra’a, the director of FreeKareem and MidEast Youth, will be interviewed in a story on our Flood the Jail with Mail campaign tomorrow. Flood the Jail is a campaign to encourage people to write Kareem Amer (real name: Abdelkarim Nabil Soliman), the imprisoned Egyptian blogger. The campaign starts on April 7 and extends through April 21. (It goes without saying, you should feel free to write him at any time, but especially then.)

Go analogue to comfort one of your digital brethren.

Send Kareem a letter, a physical letter, written in your own hand, something he can hold in his. And when the prison officials see the bags of mail coming in, it will warn them off of a return to their earlier practice of physical abuse, not just of Kareem, but of any prisoner of conscience. You can listen to the story on The World’s website. It was prepared by Clark Boyd, who has an enduring interest in these issues and is very good at his job, so even if you’re familiar with what we’re doing, and with Kareem’s case, you’ll probably learn something new.