EGYPT
Appeal hearing next week for journalist sentenced to prison for
putting poem on website

Reporters Without Borders expressed support today for Shohdy Surur,
webmaster for the Egyptian Al Ahram Weekly, whose appeal will be
heard next week against a one-year prison sentence he received in
June for posting on another website a sexually-explicit, socially
critical poem written by his late father 30 years ago.

"This conviction, unprecedented in Egypt, is quite grotesque," said
Reporters Without Borders secretary-general Robert Ménard. "Why
should he be declared guilty today of something written back then by
his father, who was himself never prosecuted when he was alive?

"While claiming they are defending public decency, the authorities
are really trying to stifle free expression on the Internet. In
1993, the constitutional high court ruled that the right to criticise
people, including public officials, was an integral part of
democracy. This right should apply to any media," Ménard said,
adding that if Surur's sentence was confirmed, "Egypt will be joining
the club of countries who are enemies of the Internet."

Surur was sentenced on 30 June under article 178 of the penal code,
which forbids possession of material for sale or distribution "with
intent to corrupt public morals." He had posted on a website,
www.wadada.net, which is partly devoted to the work of his poet and
actor father Naguib, a poem called Kuss Ummiyat, which contained
passages said to be "an affront to public morals."

The poem was written by the elder Surur, in earthy and
sexually-explicit language, as a criticism of Egyptian society and
culture after the country's defeat in the 1967 Six-Day War with
Israel. He several times likens Egypt to a prostitute. Since no law
refers to the Internet, the state brought charges under the law on
public morals.

The poem has been on the US-based www.wadada.net for the past three
years. Its author, who died in 1978, was never prosecuted for
writing it. Though never published in Egypt, it is very well-known
there and audio cassettes of it easily found.

Shohdy Surur was arrested on 22 November last year at his home, which
was searched and his computer seized. Police interrogated him for
three days.

Surur, who has dual Russian and Egyptian nationality and lives in
Russia, will not be attending the appeal hearing, set for 14 October
in Cairo, which means the appeal might be rejected and the jail
sentence confirmed.

Surur was born in Russia, his mother's nationality, and is one of
Russia's Internet pioneers. He was part of the team that created the
country's first webzine (www.zhurnal.ru), where a Russian translation
of John Barlow's "A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace"
appeared which he later translated into Arabic. From 1998, he worked
in Cairo as webmaster of the English-language Al-Ahram Weekly's
website.