Known variously as Egypt’s Sharansky and post-Mubarak Egypt’s first prisoner of conscience, Maikel Nabil Sanad (right) recently served 10 months in prison for blogging about the military’s human rights violations. His detention sends the same message as the authorities’ prosecution of pro-democracy NGOs, he says: the US should invest in Egypt’s democrats instead of unreliable, autocratic military allies.

Last November, three months into my 130-day hunger strike in Egyptian prison, I was called into the office of a senior general in the military court. I was led there in handcuffs and my coarse blue prison uniform.

As I sat, the general leaned back in his big chair, stared directly into my eyes and smiled. “Last week, I met with some American generals in the Pentagon,” he said. His message was clear: America was on his side, while a liberal democratic activist like me was in prison.

Last March, Egypt’s post-revolutionary interim military government sentenced me to three years in prison for “insulting the military”—meaning blogging about its violations of Egyptians’ human rights.

Activists around the world fought for my freedom. It was because of this global pressure that I was released two months ago. But the military has made sure I know that I can be returned to prison at any time on a whim………..

Few Egyptian revolutionaries believed that the toppling of Hosni Mubarak would lead to such a militarized nightmare. We rose against Mubarak to build a free and democratic country. We wanted the dignity of all citizens respected. Instead, we were killed, injured and arbitrarily detained by the military regime…………….

During my imprisonment, I was thrilled to read the letters from Sen. Mark Kirk and Rep. Frank Wolf to Egypt’s interim leader, Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi, and me. But as I languished in prison, I wondered how effective these statements were.

In December, the military repeated this outrage and accused 19 American civil-society workers of crimes, prohibiting them from leaving Egypt. The military chiefs eventually allowed the Americans to leave Egypt, though they still haven’t dropped the case.

The fall of the Mubarak regime should have taught the world that there is nothing stable about a military dictatorship constantly violating human rights. The only hope for lasting peace and security, for Egypt and America, are the democratic activists still fighting for their rights.

The full version of this article appeared in U.S. editions of The Wall Street Journal.

One of Egypt’s leading dissident bloggers today issued a defiant message from behind bars to the country’s ‘militarist’ rulers.

“Prison never changed an idea,” said Maikel Nabil Sanad (left), who was last week given a two-year jail sentence by a military court in Cairo. The blogger, widely known as in post-Mubarak Egypt’s first prisoner of conscience or Egypt’s Sharansky, refuses to pay outstanding legal fees, rejects the legitimacy of the court, and vows to continue his hunger strike until death, if necessary.

His sentence “insults the spirit” of Egypt’s Jasmine revolution, saidReporters Without Borders.

RTWT

Photo credit: The New Yorker

Egypt may have completed the second round of its first democratic elections, but the sentencing of a dissident blogger is a disturbing sign of authoritarian resilience, say rights groups.

Maikel Nabil Sanad (above), widely known as the first prisoner of conscience in post-Mubarak Egypt, had his sentence reduced by a military tribunal from three years to two on Wednesday, but the Obama administration today joined rights advocates in criticizing the verdict.

“We are very concerned about reports that the military court has again sentenced [Nabil] to prison for criticizing the Egyptian Armed Forces,” said State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland. “Civilians ought to be tried in civilian courts.”

“We continue to urge the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces to reconsider this verdict and we call on the government to protect the universal rights of all Egyptian citizens, including the right to free expression,” she said.

Nabil has been on hunger strike since August to protest his detention for criticizing the ruling military on Facebook and in his blog. He was charged with “insulting the military establishment” in a prosecution that human rights and democracy advocates portray as evidence that the Supreme Council of Armed Forces is perpetuating “Mubarakism without Mubarak.”

“This perpetuation of Mubarak’s oppressive policies with his detractors means more deterioration for public freedoms, despite the success of the Egyptian uprising,” said a statement from the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information signed by eight human rights groups.

The military may have been prepared to release Nabil’s “as a face-saving measure” if he apologized, said Heba Morayef, a Cairo-based researcher for Human Rights Watch. “But because of his principle — he didn’t recognize the legitimacy of military trials — it has turned into a battle of wills.”

Democracy and rights advocates fear that the relative success of Egypt’s elections creates a misleading picture of a transitional process in which democratic procedures detract attention from illiberal, anti-democratic practices.

“Nabil is a civilian and he should not be tried by a military court,” said Human Rights First’s Quinn O’Keefe. “The SCAF continues to arrest, intimidate, and convict activists through hasty military trials. The international community would be remiss to focus solely on Egypt’s elections and not the ongoing human rights abuses.”

Jailed Egyptian blogger Maikel Nabil Sanad (right) is in critical condition after going on a hunger strike on August 23, the World Movement for Democracy reports. Sanad was arrested by the Egyptian military on March 28 for “denouncing human rights violations and the military’s close relationship with the government” on his blog, according to Reporters Without Borders.

The pro-democracy advocate has stopped drinking water and refused his medication for a heart condition to protest “his continued imprisonment, his alleged mistreatment at the hands of the military prison guards, and the delay in dealing with his appeal,” his brother Mark told the Committee to Protect Journalists. His brother is also being harassed by police.

Earlier this month, dozens of activists called for his release at a protest outside the Journalists Syndicate, demanding an end to the trials of civilians in military courts.

Sanad was one of the first bloggers to be imprisoned by the Egyptian military since the fall of Mubarak. Arab human rights advocates, Reporters Without Borders and other organizations supporting freedom of expression around the world have called on the government to free him without delay.

Civil society groups accuse the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces of continuing former president Hosni Mubarak’s strategy of promoting political tensions while adopting a purely “cosmetic” approach  to reform.