Egypt: A Blogger Attacked in His House

waeltweet

At noon today, while Egyptian bloggers were in their jobs, or browsing the Internet, a Twitter message reached those following prominent blogger Wael Abbas, which read:

My mother and I have been assaulted my a Police officer and his brother, they broke into our house and beat me up. My head has a cut and I lost one tooth. Police corruption has reached my house!

Abbas followed up his message with a new Tweet saying he is trying to call the police for help, but that nobody has shown up. The Egyptian blogger, who has 1,875 followers on Twitter, stopped answering his phone, while a considerable number of friends, bloggers and activists were trying to reach him. Some blog posts on the assault even appeared with Abbas’ phone number.

It is noteworthy that Abbas blogs on torture crimes committed by the Egyptian police. And his blog Al-Wa3i Al-Masri (Misr Digital) has published many leaked clips showing torture in police stations. According to Abbas, he was threatened a few times that he will be arrested or physically harmed.

Abbas finally answered a call from one of the bloggers, saying he had just arrived at the police station to report the assault. He said his mother was fine but that his head was hurting and that his tooth was gone! News of his attack soon made the rounds in the Egyptian blogosphere, and on Twitter, Jaiku and Facebook.

The police officer who beat him up, is one of his neighbors, and reportedly has a problem with the family, so he used his authority as a civil servant to harass Abbas and his elderly mother.

5 comments

Cancel this reply

Join the conversation -> Mahmoud

Authors, please log in »

Guidelines

  • All comments are reviewed by a moderator. Do not submit your comment more than once or it may be identified as spam.
  • Please treat others with respect. Comments containing hate speech, obscenity, and personal attacks will not be approved.