Free Alaa AccessNow petition to the Obama administration and Congress

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Egyptian blogger and software developer Alaa Abd El Fattah keynoting the Silicon Valley Human Rights Conference. October 25, 2011.


Off the plane from Silicon Valley and straight into Egyptian military prison. This is the fate of Alaa Abd El Fattah, one of the keynote speakers at RightsCon. Alaa, a high-profile activist, blogger and software developer, is now languishing in prison for refusing to answer questions from an illegitimate military tribunal on questionable charges of “incitement.” His crime? Demanding that civilians be tried by judges, not soldiers.

Alaa's case represents a far greater injustice - at least 12,000 Egyptian citizens have stood before a tribunal since the overthrow of Mubarak. This is a gross violation of international law and a far cry from the democracy Egyptians called for earlier this year.

Just last week, President Obama called for an end to the Egyptian state of emergency and to cease trying civilians in military tribunals. As Egypt's largest aid donor, the US has the power to demand that Egypt’s military rulers change course, release Alaa, and the other citizens detained or sentenced though such extraordinary courts.

Dear President Obama and the US Congress,
We urge you to call on Egypt’s Supreme Council of the Armed Forces to immediately and unconditionally end emergency law and stop the military trial and deterntion of civilians, including Alaa Abd El Fattah.

https://www.accessnow.org/page/s/free-alaa

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1. Video: Egyptians march in protest of Alaa's detention and against military trials for civilians

http://www.arabawy.org/2011/11/01/in-solidarity-with-alaa-seif/

via @3arabawy, who has been posting incredible images of these protests we're not even hearing about here.

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2. At storify:

http://storify.com/aym/egyptians-and-their-supporters-campaign-online-to-freealaa

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3. At Boing boing: Free Alaa. Again

This weekend, Egyptian blogger, Twitter activist, and human rights advocate Alaa Abd El Fattah (@alaa), who is something of a legend, went in to a military court in Egypt for interrogation. "He refused to answer the military’s questions, refused to grant them legitimacy, and was thus detained for 15 days," Jillian York writes in this blog post about her friend.

At Global Voices, Amira Al Hussaini has more here, and Rasha Abdullah has more here. At the NYT, Bob Mackey has background on the case. Egyptian activists around the world are outraged.

This isn't the first time Alaa has gone to jail for political reasons: there was a high-profile internet campaign five years ago for his freedom, when he was held under similarly trumped-up charges. The regime hasn't changed. The images in this post are all from that campaign.





http://boingboing.net/2011/10/31/free-alaa-again.html

[Kaleko]

4. Thanks for keeping this story alive.

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5. Free Alaa, Tahrir protest Nov 1

You MUST see @3arabawy's work. He was probably the most powerful photographer of the revolution and he's still a young man. His talent is astonishing.

http://www.arabawy.org/

[EFerrari]

6. Kick