An Egyptian blogger has been released after serving four years in prison on charges of insulting Islam and the president, a human rights group and an interior ministry source said on Wednesday.
The Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI) said blogger Abdel Kareem Nabil, 26, known as Kareem Amer, was in bad health and was beaten by security officers before his release on Tuesday.
A Cairo-based source from the Interior Ministry confirmed Amer had been release on Tuesday but denied the blogger was beaten by officers. A student at the state-run religious al-Azhar University, Amer was arrested in 2006 on charges of insulting Islam and President Hosni Mubarak in his blog posts. He was sentenced to four years in prison and expelled from the university.
"Kareem was released on Tuesday morning and his health is bad but he is safe now," Gamal Eid, head of ANHRI, which represented Amer at court, told Reuters. "He was detained for 11 days beyond his court sentence and beaten by officers who did not give any reasons," Eid added.
The first blogger to face trial in Egypt for online content, Amer was first released on November 5 from Alexandria's Borg el-Arab prison where he stayed for four years.