Alaa Abd El-Fatah, an award-winning blogger in Egypt who was jailed last month, today received a release order from prison according to blogs maintained by supporters. He is due home later this week.
RSF.org explains:
Alaa Abd El-Fatah was arrested on 7 May 2006 while he was taking part in a demonstration in front of a Cairo court. He was accused of "illegal gathering" (in violation of the emergency law), "obstructing traffic", "insulting President Mubarak" and "insulting police officers during his arrest".
Alaa Abd El-Fatah is co-author of Manal and Alaa's Bit Bucket, jointly awarded a 2005 best blog prize by Reporters Without Borders and German media Deutsche Welle.
The "Free Alaa" blog states:
Alaa will now spend at least a day on a tour of police stations, and will likely be interviewed at Lazoghly, the headquarters of the Interior Ministry. But he should be back where he belongs (…) within the next 24-48 hours.
Stories of jailed bloggers like this always seem remote and "over there" until you sit down and read their stuff for a spell. They guy's into Radiohead and Nirvana, for chrissakes. He's like you or me, only — well, he's in Egypt. Snip from the "about me" page on Alaa's blog, in which he waxes nostalgic about early music loves:
[And of] course Nirvana (you can't be a teenager without listening to Nirvana)… only microbus drivers listened to decent Egyptian music at that time so apart from Mounir I didn't like anything Egyptian. there was Portishead, Radiohead (creep was big at that time), Cranberries (zombie eih eih), Prodigy (I got the poison, I got the remedy). was Metallica's black album released at that time too? That led to going to metal and rock concerts, being mildly harassed when they cracked down on the black clads and long hairs in the infamous satanics incidents, while this was minor police abuse compared to what is the norm in Egyptian society and only had an effect on a thin strip of society I felt first hand for the first time what my parents tried hard to explain to me, you can't avoid politics, you can't just pretend this country is not fucked up […] I still fantasize about fragging them all with bazookas.
