Rights group calls for release of Egyptian blogger

HUMAN Rights Watch has called for the release of Egyptian TV journalist and blogger Abd al-Monim Mahmud. 

Here’s an excerpt from the Human Rights Watch statement posted on the Human Rights Education Associates site.
 

Around midnight on April 14, security forces at the Cairo airport detained
`Abd al-Monim Mahmud, a 27-year-old journalist for the London-based
satellite channel Al-Hiwar and prominent blogger affiliated with the
Muslim Brotherhood, as he attempted to travel to Sudan to do reporting for
an Al-Hiwar segment on human rights in the Arab world.

The next day, a prosecutor charged Mahmud with “membership in a banned
organization,” with “being an administrator of a banned organization,” and
with funding an armed group. According to Islam Lutfi, one of Mahmud’s
lawyers present at his interrogation, the State Security bureau’s
preliminary investigation (mahdar al-tahamiyyat) also cited Mahmud’s
public criticisms of the government’s human rights record and specifically
its use of torture. The prosecutor ordered Mahmud detained for 15 days,
after which time the prosecutor must review the order.

“Once again, the Egyptian government is prosecuting a journalist because
he has reported on human rights abuses in the country,” said Sarah Leah
Whitson, Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “The
government should focus its energies on ending the abuses, not silencing
those who expose them.”
 

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