Refusing to give up the pressing of charges against the policeman who attacked him, Wael Abbas was hauled into police headquarters today in Cairo. He is now free. From what we can tell, the policeman and his henchman were charged, but released on bail.

I presume the policeman made a counter-charge against Abbas, explaining his detainment. But we are waiting to hear from him. According to his Twitter account, “(police) r exerting massive pressure on me and my mom 2 reconcile with the assailants” and “embedded threats of using false witnesses.”¬†

“Wael Abbas is currently under arrest, follow developments on twitter @waelabbas”

We found out this morning via his Facebook status line that Egyptian blogger and film-maker Wael Abbas has been arrested.

Two days ago, Wael and his mother were attacked in their house by an Egyptian policeman and a partner.

It looks like the cop who beat him and his mother up is trying to use the incident to accuse him of libel. It may be that the whole situation was staged just so he could be arrested for it, though that remains to be seen.

Subsequent tweets include the following.

preparing to be left with no eyewitnesses at all

suspicion that the whole thing was staged to get me, not sure yet

the officer denies his presence during the assault and they are accusing me of assault too

The latest, from 7:31 a.m. PST says, “preparing to be left with no eyewitnesses at all.”

According to Global Voices, the well-known Egyptian blogger and film-maker Wael Abbas was attacked along with his mother in their house in Cairo. Wael made the announcement via his Twitter account.

My mother and I have been assaulted my a Police officer and his brother, they broke into our house and beat me up. My head has a cut and I lost one tooth. Police corruption has reached my house!

Abbas finally did make it to a police station to report the crime, after a period of non-responsiveness, according to GVO.

It is noteworthy that Abbas blogs on torture crimes committed by the Egyptian police. And his blog Al-Wa3i Al-Masri (Misr Digital) has published many leaked clips showing torture in police stations. According to Abbas, he was threatened a few times that he will be arrested or physically harmed.

Abbas finally answered a call from one of the bloggers, saying he had just arrived at the police station to report the assault. He said his mother was fine but that his head was hurting and that his tooth was gone!

Abbas’s YouTube archives were deleted at one point by YouTube.

According to Associate Press (via Forbes), Monsters & Critics, and others, today’s Sixth of April events today in Egypt fizzled. The country’s security forces arrested at least 25 people in advance of the day of protest, which was partially to commemorate last years Sixth of April event. Today, they arrested an additional 15. (AP asserts a total of 56 arrested.)

According to AP, hundreds of riot police were stationed near the areas of protest in the Egyptian capital.

Police clashed with protesting university students Monday, as a planned nationwide strike and series of demonstrations by Egyptian pro-democracy activists fizzled Monday in the face of a massive security presence and low turnout.

Considering the fact that Egypt has arrested secular and left-wing students, attorneys, members of the press and of the conservative Muslim Brotherhood, I cannot imagine a better poster-child for the idea that all of us, regardless of our politics, religion, creed or ethnic background, are best served by the ability to say what we will in public and compete in the ‘marketplace of ideas’ than the Sixth of April. If that message can be taken away from this apparent failure, then maybe the failure is not so eggregious after all.

If anyone in Egypt can confirm this, or correct us, please do so in the comments.

Today Egypt arrested 25 people Kafr el-Sheikh for protesting the imprisonment of two activists, Sarah Rezk and Amina Taha. The activists, and 18 of the new arrestees, are members of Sixth of April Youth that got its start a year ago as a Facebook-based protest group attempting to organize protest against government-inflated bread prices. The two were distributing fliers for a planned protest tomorrow to commemorate the anniversary of that intitial action.

According to The National of Abu Dhabi:

Organisers from the Sixth of April Youth have urged Egyptians to not go to work, to hang black banners from their balconies and protest at several locations around the country. They have asked people who have to go to work to wear black.Yesterday’s protesters in Kafr el-Sheikh were demanding the release of two students, Sarah Rezk and Amina Taha, who were arrested last week for distributing leaflets calling for the strike.

According to the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information, the courts have extended the girls’ sentences for at least 15 more days.

According to a report from Reuters:

Sixth of April Youth has since transformed itself into a broader anti-government movement, collecting members through the social networking site Facebook, which along with blogs has emerged as a major forum for government critics in Egypt.

Others arrested included journalists covering the protests and attorneys working with the group.

According to the Facebook site, Free Diaa Eddin Gad, the Egyptian blogger has been released. His blog is Sout Ghaded. We wrote about Gad’s arrest earlier. He was detained due to critical writing about his country’s inaction during the latest Israeli actions in Gaza.

We welcome Diaa Eddin Gad out of the darkness.

For coverage of his health and treatment during detention, Global Voices writes about it here.

The United Nations has taken only two years out of his four year sentence to condemn the Egyptian authorities for imprisoning blogger Abdul Kareem Nabeel Suleiman, or Kareem Amer. 

Kareem’s trumped up charges included generic defamation and malice against everyone from the country’s president to Islam to…well, who knows?

It’s good that the United Nations has finally stated what the rest of us know, that there is little in the way of legitimate legality in Kareem’s detention. It would have been a great deal more useful, however, if they had come to this not-very-demanding conclusion before he was locked up.

I imagine that in another couple of years we’ll probably be lucky enough to see a pronouncement to the effect that refusing Omid Reza medical help was irresponsible.

Download the full text of the United Nations statement.