EGYPTIAN BLOGGER Abdolkarim Nabil Seliman has been sentenced to four years in prison for his blogging:

The Blogger-Martyr of Egypt
Friday, Feb. 23, 2007 By AMANY RADWAN/CAIRO (Time Magazine)

A chill has just gone through the collective spine of the bloggers of the Middle East. On Thursday, Egypt sentenced Abdel Kareem Suleiman (a.k.a. "Kareem Amer" online) to four years in prison — three years for blog posts that insulted Islam and one year for similar writings that defamed President Hosni Mubarak. While bloggers have been harrassed and a couple arrested by Mideast governments in the past, this is the first time one has been sentenced to prison. Before Kareem's arrest and conviction, internet writing was considered a safe and open venue for many young men and women in the region, a vehicle to freely express their opinions, doubts and misgivings about thorny issues in their tightly controlled societies.

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Barbaric.