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| Africa North | |
| Egypt editor avoids jail, fined for insulting president | |
| 2007-02-28 | |
| CAIRO - A prominent Egyptian independent newspaper editor had his one-year jail sentence for insulting the president quashed on Tuesday but was fined 22,000 pounds (nearly 4,000 dollars). ‘There was nothing illegal in what was written in Al Destour, and this verdict is still against the freedom of journalism and expression in Egypt,’ Ibrahim Eissa told AFP. He had originally been sentenced to one year in prison for carrying a story about a court case against President Hosni Mubarak him in his weekly Destour newspaper. The judge in Tuesday’s appeal threw out the jail term but maintained the fine. ‘There is a state of madness against freedom of expression and opinion in Egypt,’ Eissa said shortly before the court case, charging that the government, often through third party law suits, hounded journalists in the country. The original suit against Eissa was filed by a private citizen on behalf of the president and, in contrast to the notoriously relaxed pace of Egyptian justice, that case was concluded almost immediately. ‘The case went in front of the court on a Monday and two weeks later I was sentenced to a year in prison,’ recalled Eissa. ‘It was maybe one of the fastest court cases ever witnessed in Egypt.’
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| Posted by:Steve White |
| #1 Well, over here, if you smear the President, your record sales may drop. That's pretty much morally the same thing. At least if you're an idiotarian. |
| Posted by: Jackal 2007-02-28 07:22 |