Twenty-two year old law student Abdul Kareem Nabeel Suleiman marked the first of a four year sentence in an Egyptian prison last November. His crime was “defaming the President of Egypt” on his blog. His first year in prison included isolation and physical torture.
The one thing that’s made a big difference for Kareem, his supporters say, has been international attention. Now those supporters are calling for a two week campaign of snail-mail sent to the jail.
The goal is to let Kareem, and his jailers, know that the situation is far from forgotten. Past mail and media coverage have also improved physical conditions in the jail. Below are links for more info, including a link you can use to add a reminder of the letter writing campaign to your Google Calendar.
Resources
Kareem’s primary support group is FreeKareem.org. (Very slow page load.) His crime was in large part denying the truth of Islam, but his supporters say they are primarily Muslims who defend his right to do so.
More in depth coverage of this and other cases can be found at The Committee to Protect Bloggers.
The “Flood the Jail with Mail” campaign is asking you to send a letter or a postcard to Kareem between April 7th and the 21st. You can click on the button below to add a reminder to your Google Calendar.
So far he’s been receiving physical mail. Below are the addresses you can use to send that mail, both the English and the Arabic must be present, so fire up your printer and print this page.
Alexandria
Borg Al-Arab Prison
Room 1 Section 22
Prisoner Abdul Kareem Nabil Suleiman
The Arab Republic of Egypt
In too many other cases, the Western tech community has dropped the ball for people working online but living in different places. See, for example, the terrible treatment by YouTube of Egyptian video blogger Wael Abbas, whose police brutality watchdog videos were deleted from the site by the company.
We hope you’ll set up a reminder and take a few minutes next month to send Kareem a postcard.
