Welcome today is Friday the 23rd of February. I'm your host Anastasia Yuglova and I regret deeply even having to discuss the events talked about in this particular episode of Cato Daily Podcast.

Egyptian blogger Abdel Karim, Nabil Solomon, who goes by the blogger named Karim,

was sentenced to four years in prison yesterday for the crimes of spreading information disruptive of public order, incitement

to hate Muslims, and insulting the president.

In an op-ed that ran in the Washington Post just a day before Kareem sentencing yesterday.

Cato Senior Fellow Tom Palmer and Dean Raja Kamal of the Harris School of Public Policy

at the University of Chicago argued for Kareem's release and for the preservation of press freedoms in Egypt.

They lost this battle but the campaign continues at www.

Free Kareem.org that's W. W. W dot F R E E K A R E M dot org. I'm on the phone today with Tom Palmer for

this podcast. Tom what landed this Egyptian kid in jail at just the age of 22?

Well he had maintained a personal blog as many college students do all around the world

with his views about all sorts of things, hardly uncommon.

But he touched the nerve of the administrators at the university where he studied.

He referred to it as a center of extremism,

and he said that he even called a terrorist university

a Lazar university and he was expelled for having criticized the

university in strong terms and then and really just a shame and a

disgrace to university they demanded that the prosecutors prosecute him for

his remarks and pointed him out to the authorities.

He was detained in spring of last year for some period of time, but then released.

He continued to write and his writings drew again the attention of the

public prosecutor with the support of the university doing this and he was detained.

...