Friday - November 04, 2005

Khadaffi Duck Jails Blogger

Freedom of speech in the Arab world? Get real! Folks, the governments of the Middle East don’t know how to conduct business in a free and open society. All they know is fascism. Islamofascism, if you want to be entirely correct. It’s amazing to me that the groups in America who benefit the most from free speech and even abuse it are the ones who are violently against our attempts to bring freedom and democracy to that backward region. Don’t even get me started on the women’s rights groups who don’t give a rat’s a** about their female counterparts who live under outright slavery and oppression, all according to Islamic “laws”. Bah!

Libya Reportedly Puts Blogger in Prison
CAIRO, Egypt (AP)

Libya has sent to prison for 18 months a blogger who criticized the government on the Internet, Human Rights Watch says in a report that inspired a series of Web tributes to the dissident Friday. A Tripoli court convicted Abdel Raziq al-Mansuri of illegal possession of a handgun and sentenced him to 18 months’ imprisonment on Oct. 19, the New York-based rights group said in an e-mail to The Associated Press in Cairo.

“The gun charges are a ruse,” said the Middle Eastern director of HRW, Sarah Leah Whitson. “The authorities went after al-Mansuri because they did not like what he wrote.” Al-Mansuri, 52, was detained in Tobruk, his hometown, in January after publishing about 50 articles critical of Libyan society and government on a dissident Web site based in Britain, http://www.akhbar-libya.com, the rights group said Thursday.

Libyan government officials were not available for comment Friday as the country was celebrating the Eid al-Fitr holiday that follows the holy month of Ramadan. The rights group, who visited al-Mansuri in Tripoli’s Abu Selim prison on May 5, said his family published the outcome of his trial in an Oct. 27 letter to the government, media and rights organizations that condemned al-Mansuri’s detention and sentence.

“Such outspoken criticism is rare in Libya,” said Human Rights Watch. Politics has been tightly controlled in the country since Col. Moammar Gadhafi seized power in 1969. The letter said the authorities had asked family members to denounce al-Mansuri as mentally deranged.

“If defending the right to free speech, and asking for basic human rights is insane in our country, then welcome to a family that is, from its oldest to its youngest, insane,” the letter said, according to Human Rights Watch. The letter added that in sentencing al-Mansuri, the court had refused to give him credit for the months in detention he had already served.

The rights group said that after detaining al-Mansuri, Libyan security officials searched his home and “found an old pistol that belonged to his father.” The group reported the head of the Internal Security Agency, Col. Tuhami Khaled, as denying that al-Mansuri was arrested for his Internet writings.

“He was arrested because he had a gun without a license,” the group quoted Khaled as telling its representatives in May. Asked why the Internal Security Agency was detaining al-Mansuri instead of the police, Khaled replied that the pistol was “a job for internal security,” the group said.

- Read More On This Story Here

Posted by The Skipper     on 11/04/2005 at 09:23 AM   
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Not that very many people ever read this far down, but this blog was the creation of Allan Kelly and his friend Vilmar. Vilmar moved on to his own blog some time ago, and Allan ran this place alone until his sudden and unexpected death partway through 2006. We all miss him. A lot. Even though he is gone this site will always still be more than a little bit his. We who are left to carry on the BMEWS tradition owe him a great debt of gratitude, and we hope to be able to pay that back by following his last advice to us all:

1. Keep a firm grasp of Right and Wrong
2. Stay involved with government on every level and don't let those bastards get away with a thing
3. Use every legal means to defend yourself in the event of real internal trouble, and, most importantly:
4. Keep talking to each other, whether here or elsewhere

It's been a long strange trip without you Skipper, but thanks for pointing us in the right direction and giving us a swift kick in the behind to get us going. Keep lookin' down on us, will ya? Thanks.

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