ICORN Residency

Kareem Amer, real name: Abdulkareem Nabil Soliman Abdulhameed Amer (born 1984) – a young Egyptian blogger, journalist and human rights defender. He was born to a pious Islamic family. In the years 2004-2006, he published a cycle of entries on his blog that criticised the Al Azhar University for the dissemination of extremist ideas and revealed information about the regime of President Mubarak. He was the first Arabian blogger who was sentenced to 4 years of imprisonment for ‘insulting Islam’ and ‘disseminating false information about President Mubarak.’ This sentence caused a series of protests worldwide, which were expressed, among others, via freekareem.org – a website created especially for this purpose. In spite of having been released from prison, he was persecuted, tracked and intimidated. He received death threats from Islamic extremists. Amer’s activities exposing mechanisms of action of fundamentalists coming to power, advocating the secularity of the state, the right to freedom of religion and conscience and the transformation of Egypt into a state of freedom and tolerance were highly esteemed by the international community of journalists, reporters and ICORN experts. PEN International and The Writers in Prison Committee PEN spoke in his defence. For his activity, Kareem Amer was granted the Reporters without Borders prize in 2007. Being widely available on the Internet, his texts were often quoted in comments of leading press agencies both as the uncompromising voice of the young generation of Egyptians that led to political and systemic transformations and as an important example of the use of electronic media and the Internet for demanding respect for human rights and the right to the freedom of religion, opinion and speech.