CAIRO: An Egyptian military court has ended deliberations in the controversial case against a local blogger and has said the young Egyptian will be released shortly, the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI) said on Sunday afternoon. Mostafa had been under military tribunal over content published on his blog.

According to the 20-year-old blogger’s legal team at ANHRI’s Legal Aid Unit, the Nasr City court in Cairo, the case was not on the list of hearings to be heard on Sunday and that release procedures had already begun.

Last week, Mostafa was expected to hear a verdict in the trial, but the court postponed it until Sunday in what has become a controversial use of military courts in the country.

“The release decision is a perfectly wise step,” ANHRI said in a press statement shortly after hearing word of the expected release of the blogger. “This is one issue that should have not been referred to court in the first place. We hope that the Egyptian government will take other positive steps and release bloggers imprisoned under emergency law,” it added.

On February 25, Mostafa was summoned to the military prosecutions office in the governorate of Kafr el-Sheikh in the northern Delta region after he had been phone and learned that a communique had been filed against him by the military academy accusing him of “publishing false information on his blog a year ago, on February 15, 2009,” ANHRI said in a press statement last week.

The military prosecutor then, apparently conducted a swift investigation. Upon completing his investigation, he decided to put Mostafa in detention pending further findings. The case was closed on February 28, and then transferred to a military court for a quick trial.

BM

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