"Monkey" Egyptian blogger Abdul Kareem sentenced

The (London) Guardian reports that 22-year-old Egyptian blogger Abdel-Karim Nabil Suleiman (aka Abdul Kareem), 22, a former law student at Cairo's Al-Azhar University, was sentenced to four years in prison for having insulted Islam and the Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak.

As the Guardian reports:

Suleiman was one of several bloggers arrested last year, most of whom have connections to Egypt's pro-democracy reform movement. Others were freed but he was put on trial - a sign of the sensitivity of his writings on religion. He was first detained in 2005 after criticising Muslim rioters in a post about sectarian clashes in his neighbourhood headlined The Naked Truth of Islam as I Saw it.

He also described some of the companions of the prophet Muhammad as terrorists and likened Mr Mubarak to the pharaohs who ruled ancient Egypt.

There was no mention of Abdul Kareem's father in the Guardian' coverage of the sentencing hearing. Earlier we cited a news report that says his father called him a monkey, and to add insult to injury, so to speak, that he should be put to death in three days should he refuse to recant his criticisms of Islam