as part of the Egyptian government's clamp down on dissent. Over 100 free speech activists are now being held by authorities according to Human Rights Watch.

http://www.gn.apc.org/freealaa.html

Egyptian Blogger Alaa Abdel Fatah has been arrested alongside 10 others while demonstrating in support of the independence of the Judiciary in Egypt
and the release of previous demonstrators who were detained 2 weeks
earlier. The Police entrapped them, cordoning off their peaceful
protest and then proceeded to handpick the demonstrators that they
wanted to detain, beat them, and then arrested them.

Alaa and his wife Manal are very close friends and colleagues of the APC, and their blog aggregator manalaa.net was recently the winner of the international Best of the Blogs award from Reporters Without Borders.

For more background information on the arrests see the following links:

  • Free Alaa Campaign
  • Human Rights Watch press release
  • APC Blog page
  • Global Voices Online
  • Human Rights Watch
  • BBC World Service (broadcast programme audio file)